Best way to migrate/merge /Documents and /OneDrive


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So for a while now I've been running both OneDrive and regular Win8.1 folders, poorly mirroring each other. I would prefer for everything in the libraries to sync with my OneDrive. The way to do that, of course, is to change the properties of the This PC/Documents etc libraries to point to the OneDrive/Documents equivalent.

 

My question before making this commitment is how it will screw up all of the programs that rely on the data in the libraries or lose current data. So...? Experiences?

 

MS didn't make this the most smooth of transitions...

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  • 1 month later...

So for a while now I've been running both OneDrive and regular Win8.1 folders, poorly mirroring each other. I would prefer for everything in the libraries to sync with my OneDrive. The way to do that, of course, is to change the properties of the This PC/Documents etc libraries to point to the OneDrive/Documents equivalent.

 

My question before making this commitment is how it will screw up all of the programs that rely on the data in the libraries or lose current data. So...? Experiences?

 

MS didn't make this the most smooth of transitions...

I know the question is old, but, I thought the This PC/Documents was just a pointer to a folder, i.e the user folder, which in itself can be targeted somewhere and it will keep the same entry point. In other words, you can point this pc/documents to anywhere and programs wont know the difference. Kind of like symlinks/junctions. You just need to one way sync without deletion towards the onedrive folder, so it gets all the files from the users folder and then you change the pointer. If they are already mirrored you just change the pointer.

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  • 2 months later...

You should be able to safely point your documents folder to one underneath underneath the OneDrive root.  Most applications should not have a hardcoded path and would rely on the environment variables that are updated.

 

Having said that, I'm not sure if you'll run into concurrency issues if you have two computers trying to write to the same setting, save, document, or whatever.

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  • 3 months later...

I am on Windows 7 and I realize that Windows 8 utilizes placeholders in it's implementation but one problem that I have had when I tried to sync was that when I made a change or added a file, I couldn't tell when the desktop was actually syncing with OneDrive. 

 

On my phone, when I make changes there is a little beach-ball like icon that spins letting you know that syncing is going on. I don''t get that on my desktop so whenever I make a change, there is doubt in my mind as to whether it really did sync. As a result, I ended up just manually uploading and downloading whenever I need to because that suits my purposes. 

 

Just wondering if anyone else had experienced this lack of "beach ball"?

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