If you’re running out of space on a local volume where your OneDrive folder is stored, you’re going to run out of space fast. Or, perhaps, you just need to move the local sync folder to an archive drive. In any case, you can move a OneDrive folder with a few steps.
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how you can move a OneDrive folder from one location to another.
Prerequisites
If you’d like to follow along with the steps in this tutorial, be sure you’re on Windows 10 and have OneDrive installed and successfully syncing with the cloud.
Finding The OneDrive Folder Location
Before you can move the OneDrive folder, you must first know where it is! To find it:
1. Open File Explorer.
2. On the left side of the screen, click on the OneDrive shortcut.
3. Right-click on the OneDrive shortcut and select Properties.
4. In the OneDrive Properties box, under the General tab, notice the folder path under Location. This location is the folder path to your OneDrive folder.
Unlink OneDrive From Your Computer
Once you know the path of your current OneDrive folder, you now must disassociate or unlink your local PC from the OneDrive service. This process frees up the folder to be moved. To do that, in File Explorer:
1. Right-click on the OneDrive shortcut again and select Settings.
2. In the Microsoft OneDrive dialog box, click the Account tab. Once under this tab, click on Unlink this PC as shown below.
3. You’ll be prompted to unlink the OneDrive account from your computer. Click Unlink Account to do so.
4. After you unlink the account, ignore the new window that appears that prompts you to sign into OneDrive.
Start to Move a OneDrive Folder
At this point, OneDrive has been unlinked from the original folder freeing it up to be moved. Let’s do that.
In File Explorer:
1. Navigate to the old location of OneDrive.
2. Right-click on the OneDrive folder and click Cut.
3. Navigate to the parent folder where you’d like to move a OneDrive folder under and paste it. The new location of the OneDrive folder will be C:\moved OneDrive\OneDrive in the example below.
Link OneDrive Back to your Computer
The OneDrive folder has now been moved to the new location. It’s time to link OneDrive on your computer back to the OneDrive cloud service. To do so:
1. Find the OneDrive icon in the taskbar and click on it. A new window will appear will ask you to sign in again.
2. Provide the email address you had previously configured OneDrive to use in the text box and click Sign In.
3. On the next screen, OneDrive should automatically set the default location for a new OneDrive folder which is C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive. Click Change location to change that path.
4. Navigate to the new location of your OneDrive folder (C:\moved OneDrive\OneDrive) for this tutorial and click Select Folder.
5. Confirm you’re OK with using the existing folder by clicking on Use this folder.
6. Once asked to back up your folders, click on Continue.
7. When complete, navigate to the new OneDrive folder in File Explorer. If the move was successful, you should now see the OneDrive icon instead of the generic folder icon.
Conclusion
You should now know how to move a OneDrive folder from one location to another on your Windows computer! At this point, OneDrive will continuing syncing to the cloud as usual just from a different folder path.
