Reassess the possibility to ignore or exclude selected OneDrive folders and files from the sync process.
It would be great to be able to ignore or exclude selected files and folders within the OneDrive folder from syncing. It has been requested a few times before and solves user problems in a variety of areas: from software developers having problems with temporary build files and node_modules folders, through users who want to ignore sync problems (or issues like waiting days for a file to upload on a slow connection) by ignoring files in sync, to users who want to ignore files and folders created by applications, especially photo applications. There are many use cases where this feature would be a solution.
It might also be the case that a feature would reduce the number of support requests and user dissatisfaction, since users would have a way to fix various issues themselves (there is probably more applicable scenarios than described above) by desyncing a file or folder causing problems.
I know this feature has been requested before, and has received the status 'not right now', therefore I have termed this request 'reassess', to determine if the 'not right now' status is still the state of this feature request. I have collected the IDs of the uservoice requests for which this feature would be a solution (listed at the end of the request), summing the votes on these requests, this feature has a total of 549 votes, which would place at about the 35th position, among other requests which have status of 'working on it' or 'thinking about it'.
Thanks for your consideration!
The IDs of the related uservoice issues are: 6988070,10720758,10932591,10778649,10954851,11301837,11344905,11654178,13452462,15748891,17236724,8026992,15017205,17169314,18429295,7290507,11625105,12915153,13541754,16044514,7927728
William Clear
shared this idea
This feature has rolled out for files (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy#exclude-specific-kinds-of-files-from-being-uploaded) and we are looking to expanding it to folders in the future.
339 comments
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Justin Yao
commented
Absolutely agree. I have a game (Football Manager) insisted in reading customization packs of files under Documents folder, which can easily grow to over 20G over time, and the number of files it contains exceeds OneDrive limitation; plus it jams the network. What's ironic is when I'm trying to exclude the folder from being sync'ed OneDrive insisted in finishing the sync (which it just told me it can't finish) first!
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Guy Carver
commented
The devs should consider a system similar to .gitignore. The current solution is cumbersome and incomplete. This is very much needed as I like to share my projects, but I don't want to sync the .obj, .exe and other build files that are generated on the local machine when I build. Thank you.
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Robert Simpson
commented
Feature request for this to be implemented for individual users, not administrators: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/913522-onedrive-on-windows/suggestions/43153281-allow-individual-users-not-admins-to-exclude-spe
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Mark Hughes
commented
This is not a solution. Businesses working both remotely and in-office need to be able to easily switch between computers.
If we cannot exclude certain directory patterns, e.g. "\users\mark\projects\**\node_modules" it breaks one drive, which will try to sync 100,000+ files that; a) won't work on another computer, and b) don't need to be in onedrive. There is no "clean" solution to moving these out of onedrive either, we would have to make a symbolic link manually.
It may be worthwhile to look at an alternative for businesses.
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Lucas Reis commented
People asking this for more than 6 years and they haven't implemented it yet...
Mega, OwnCloud, Dropbox do that but MS even after 6 years can't do it wtf -
Anonymous
commented
What was implemented is not what was requested. Please consider a proper implementation of this and also something that works in the personal version.
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Jakub Homola
commented
The feature you implemented is by faaaaar NOT what we were asking for.
1. It needs to be user-specific. Noone is gonna ask admins to disable sync of their files in their onedrive directories. Every user has different directory layout and different needs. Admins would get crazy about those requests.
2. It needs to support folders too
3. it needs to be more general than just file types. A simple file/folder path comparison with a regex is enough.
I mean, you implemented an overcomplicated feature not at all meeting our needs, when all we asked for was a simple textbox in onedrive settings specifying the regex for ignored locations.
UI option for that is not a priority (for me) and can be added later. -
Patrick
commented
It is quite generic to have this option to exclude some folders to be backup. Love to see this to be launched soon.
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Anonymous
commented
This feature are global settings, not for individual users to manage their files.
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Roland
commented
This feature is broken and not working in version 21.041.0228.0001. The group policy option (but the onedrive group is available) is also missing even after importing the ADMX file to group policy.
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Daniel Kaschel
commented
Would love a regex exclusion option. My biggest issue is that onedrive tries to sync node_modules folders which are huge, contain thousands of files, and never need to be backed up. I find it a little strange that this would be so difficult to implement.
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Anonymous
commented
.gitignore plz
.oneignore even. -
Chris
commented
I find it ludicrous that OneDrive markets a portion of it's features as "backup", but then actively discourages me from working in a backed up location. If I have a have a project I'm working on, on my desktop, that has git repos in it, OneDrive likes to constantly warn me about how I'm deleting files and the sort... all part of the regular git workflow.
Why is it still not possible to right click and "Ignore this folder"? I am absolutely positive I'm not the only one with similar workflows to this.
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Martin
commented
Seriously. You got all this user input and the best you manage to do is "Block syncing of specific file types", only by extension, on a global level (Admin Center). This may cover about 10% of the use cases for the feature requested here.
In our organization, the most common issue is that Microsoft Office temporary files (filename starting with"~$") get synced and cause conflicts. Most other cloud storage providers will ignore these files BY DEFAULT. OneDrive doesn't even provide an OPTION to ignore Microsoft's own temp files? -
Anonymous
commented
I'd like to let Microsoft know that this feature is NOT working, even with the most recent build of v21.002.0104.0004. Yes, we've deployed the most recent ADMX files and have correctly implemented the required Group Policy settings. The files which we'd like to exclude are still being synced.
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Anonymous
commented
"new setting that will allow admins to exclude new files based on file name pattern or file extension" Why is this only for admins? While it can be useful to enforce corporate policies at that level, there are lots of other situation where end-users understand much better what to exclude/include?
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Mehmet Aydogan
commented
My admin says that this is still not possible. It is possible to have global exclusion. But I need to be able to exclude specific files and folders in specific folders, in my computer. Alternatively "sync only these files, file types" for specific folders will also work.
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Anonymous
commented
Has this not been implemented yet? This is ridiculous at 7000+ votes. I have engineering software that writes tens of GB of temporary files during simulations, all into a single "temp" folder. All I want to do is exclude this folder from syncing. Why not a simple .gitignore feature. We don't just need file types; we needs folders too.
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Matthew Oglesby commented
Dropbox can do this with a simple right click in the client app. Onedrive needs to support this use case on folders in personal AND business accounts.
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Ben Mehling
commented
This needs to be available for personal users as well, not just systems on a domain. Many programs store data in the User Documents folder, most of this stuff does not need to be, and should not be synced.
