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WINDOWS 11

By Will Fastie • Comment about this article

Things are not going so well for Windows 11’s new File Explorer.

But it might be OneDrive’s fault.

In fact, it’s not really possible to discuss File Explorer without including OneDrive, and vice versa. They are inextricably linked now, a probable source of many problems with synchronization. And there may be a deeper problem, buried somewhere in Windows 11, that is the source of a strange behavior described below.

My previous commentary about File Explorer focused on usability and productivity, especially regarding the UI. In general, the tabbed interface is working well, albeit with certain persistent problems. I still have complaints — and there are still strange behaviors — but my thumb is edging upward.

Synchronization is a very difficult thing. Looked at in the context of one PC and one OneDrive account, it’s logical to think that it is not terribly difficult. But let me describe the stressful environment I’ve been using, to better understand how complex a problem this is. Although I’ve said the number of computers I’m using will be reduced to two, there are still four PCs accessing two different OneDrive accounts — one for my personal use and one for AskWoody.

My daily driver, the Windows 11–based Obsidian, is on all the time and therefore has plenty of time to sync. The other three PCs are turned on only when needed and thus must catch up on synchronization at the next opportunity. How they sync sometimes depends on what has happened with Obsidian. A week ago, I made aggressive changes.

First, I began a project to prevent OneDrive from syncing files I don’t want in the cloud. I started by using Adobe Organizer, which is part of Adobe Photoshop Elements and/or Adobe Premiere Elements, to relocate files in its catalog from the Pictures folder in Documents to my main Photos folder on Obsidian’s D: drive. This is a supported — but rarely used — feature in Organizer, so it is not well done. Each folder must be moved individually via drag-and-drop, which makes it tedious — there were over 200 folders with more than 28,000 files.

Second, I started moving the other folders from Documents that I want kept locally. I created a folder named My Documents and moved 70 folders with 4,600 files into it, thus removing them from Documents.

As these folders were being moved, OneDrive was detecting the changes and synchronizing to keep up. This was perhaps the most stressful part of the task, because files are moved one at a time and thus a signal is sent to OneDrive for every file moved or otherwise altered.

Third, I changed OneDrive’s settings to prevent some folders from syncing. This is accomplished by right-clicking on the OneDrive icon in the System Tray, selecting Settings, and then clicking on Account | Choose folders to display a list of folders. As you can see in Figure 1, I deselected Documents and Pictures.

Figure 1. OneDrive Settings allow me to select which folders I want synchronized with my cloud storage.

This turns out to have been a mistake. If you look at the fine print, you’ll quickly see that Microsoft is taking the path of greatest benefit to itself. It’s true that those folders will no longer be synced, but they will still remain in the cloud, eating up my quota of OneDrive space. And their contents will be deleted from my local PC. So by Microsoft’s definition, “sync” means keeping stuff in both places. Of the two other logical options — keep locally only or keep in the cloud only — you get to choose only the latter.

That’s why I first moved things I considered sensitive to a folder OneDrive will not see, at least not automatically. There were files containing sensitive information that I did not want loose in the cloud, and now that info is safely out of the reach of OneDrive. I will suffer one inconvenience, which is that many applications’ memory of files I’ve used will be wrong. For a time, I will need to navigate to those files manually, until the apps catch up with my new reality. As a safeguard, I put the new My Documents folder on my D: drive, which you may recall is a mirror.

There is more trouble at hand, and this one is very strange. In File Explorer, there is a section in the left-hand list that begins with Desktop and contains icons for the folders usually associated with your user profile (left). These icons are not folders but rather icons unique to the folders’ expected content, such as Documents, Downloads, Music, and Videos. Below them are recently used folders, for convenience. Notice that Documents has a regular folder icon, not the special one.

Initially, this triggered an error message in File Explorer which has since disappeared. Double-clicking or using some other method to open that folder fails. I have no idea how that happened, but I suspect that the heavy reorganization activity, combined with the number of File Explorer windows and tabs I had open at the time, was the underlying cause. I think so because on the other PCs I synced, this did not happen.

A final issue, and one that is nearly impossible to deal with, is that all Microsoft applications (and many others) keep folders in Documents and expect them to be there. By turning off sync, I forced all those folders and their files into the cloud. That’s a performance hit; today’s Internet connectivity is fast, but it’s not yet as fast as the SSD that is my C: drive.

So, reluctantly, I turned “sync” back on for Documents and Pictures. For the future, I’ll need to keep an eye on all apps to make sure they are storing their files where I want them, not where Microsoft does.

Contribute your thoughts in this article’s forum!

Will Fastie is editor in chief of the AskWoody Plus Newsletter.

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