Remove files from OneDrive? Notification

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I am getting a notification in the OneDrive tray icon that says “Remove files from OneDrive? You recently deleted 572 files from this device. Do you want to remove them from OneDrive too?”   (Oddly, the similar message in the Win10 notification area reports one fewer file – 571.)

I don’t recall removing (or moving) that many files.   My device recycle bin has only 254 items and my OneDrive online recycle folder has only 203.

I am only offered two choices: “Restore files” or “Remove”.  I can’t see a way to get a list.  I’m reluctant to remove a large number of unknown files.

I’ve tried stopping/restarting OneDrive as well as a command line “/reset”.   The message keeps returning.

Any insight or recommendation appreciated.  Thanks.

Windows 10, Office 365

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pumphouse wrote:

My device recycle bin has only 254 items and my OneDrive online recycle folder has only 203.

From support.office.com:

Files deleted from your Personal Vault will only show up in your recycling bin if your Personal Vault is unlocked before you check the recycle bin. You can use the Show Personal Vault items command in the recycle bin to unlock the Personal Vault and see those items.
…
Note: Deleted online-only files will not appear in your computer’s Recycle Bin or Trash.

You don’t mention if you are using a personal account for OneDrive.

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Sorry.   I am using a personal account and I don’t have anything in my Personal vault.   There is no business account involved. I have my Desktop, Documents, Download, Pictures and Music in OneDrive and available on my device.   (I think I’m pretty vanilla in my usage.)

I use only a small amount of the 1 Terabyte allotment and only about half of the SSD on my PC.  I haven’t run CCleaner or Disk Cleanup in a while.

My OneDrive tray icon when clicked is now showing a list files “pending removal”.   I recognize a few as files I have deleted but most have long filenames that look like hexadecimal.  The names are too long to see the extension.  Maybe they are hidden temp files?

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Might there be a Retention Setting that is impacting your Office365 deletion/removal problem?

This docs.microsoft.com Retention Policies document may give some hints:
Overview of retention policies

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Perhaps there is a retention policy involved.  But as I am neither a Sharepoint nor OneDrive for Business user, it’s not clear how much of the article applies to my files.   I get a sign-in error when I try the links to the compliance center.

I have a simple consumer Office365 account.    I suspect some simplified configuration of the mechanisms described in that clear and detailed article apply, but without an explanation of the default retention policy on a consumer Office365 OneDrive, I would be guessing.

I have read that there is a second kind of recycle bin where files go for some period of time after being removed from the visible Recycle Bin.  It’s a fail safe in case of accidental deletion.  Then after more time they are truly deleted.

Perhaps they are renamed to long hexadecimal strings at that time.  So the notification I received with the goofy file names is referring cryptically to that secondary area.     If so, I should be free to safely allow the files to be removed from the secondary area.  My local onedrive files are also backed up to Carbonite (which I was using before OneDrive) so if anything important goes missing, I can probably recover.

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Or maybe these files (named with long hex strings) are old versions of Office Word or Excel files.  I read somewhere that old versions of Office files are retained for 30 days.   And I’ve noticed they don’t show up in the local and Online Recycle Bins.

Assuming I’m right, I have no clue why my device is configured to give me the notifications.  I thought I was on defaults.

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