I am Win10/Pro 22H2, updated thru the July Tuesday patches, released Jul 11 and installed Aug 4. I am not subscribed to Microsoft 365.
I don’t use OneDrive very much, but apparently when my laptop #1 was new, I experimented with it and saved a couple of experimental files. The folder where I saved them is near the top of the Navigation Panel and it is named OneDrive – Personal, See attachment ‘Navigation panel.png’.
One of the files I saved is in the OneDrive – Personal root directory and is dated in 2015. The other is in the OneDrive – Personal>Documents folder and is dated 2021. Today, I added another file in the OneDrive – Personal>Documents folder, so it has today’s date on it.
I thought that was the only OneDrive directory I had on the laptop. But, today, I noticed that there is another OneDrive directory which is under my Personal Folder. It is named OneDrive (not OneDrive – Personal). It has completely different files in it. One of these different files is in the OneDrive root directory with a date of 2022 and two other different files are in the OneDrive>Documents folder with dates of 2020 and 2021.
So, it seems these are two different OneDrive folders.
But, today, when I was in the OneDrive – Personal folder, I got a popup that asked me to set up OneDrive. This was odd news. I thought I already had a OneDrive folder set up, the one named OneDrive – Personal. See attachment ‘Set up OneDrive.png’
But, I went ahead and hit the ‘Sign in’ button, gave it my MS Account password, and then saw a dialogue box that told me that I already had a OneDrive folder and that I could elect to merge the two. So, now I still have the two OneDrive folders, one named OneDrive – Personal and the other under my Personal Folder named OneDrive. The contents of the two folders are the same now, having merged the contents of the old OneDrive – Personal folder with the contents of the old Personal Folder>OneDrive folder. So now, each OneDrive folder has the same merged content in two different locations. Or maybe, it’s the case that one folder points to the other. Anyway, the content, now merged, is the same in both. As a matter of fact, if I add a new file to one OneDrive folder, it shows up in the other OneDrive folder.
But, here’s the problem. I have a 2nd laptop and it also has those two folders: the OneDrive -Personal folder and the Personal Folder > OneDrive folder. The contents of the two folders on laptop #2 are identical to one another, about two generations behind the contents of the two newly merged OneDrive folders on laptop #1.
How do I get the two OneDrive folders on laptop #2 to sync with those two newly merged OneDrive folders on laptop #1?
And if you can answer this, why are there two OneDrive names on a laptop? Is OneDrive – Personal a name from some earlier configuration of OneDrive and Personal Folder>OneDrive a name from a later configuration. And they remain separate unless you choose to merge them?? I don’t get it, really.
