Originally Posted by jsnydcsa

As loyal readers of this forum know, I manage computers, iPhones and other electronic items (from WAY afar, remotely) of my two elderly parents. Let's just call them Mr. and Mrs. jsnydcsa Snr. It has brought up all sorts of issues, many solved right here in this forum (see, e.g. getting Malwarebytes, TeamViewer, the consumption of lots of whisky).

I've got a new one. Somehow, Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. has managed to move virtually his entire laptop hard drive's contents (basically Windows "Documents" "Pictures" folders and his Outlook .pst file) OFF his physical C: Drive ONTO OneDrive and thus now, everything is on OneDrive. Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. claims the only way this happened was that Microsoft Edge (I typed Edge, that's not a mistake) must have "tricked him" (that's a direct quote) into uploading everything off his C: drive and into OneDrive. Frankly, I think he was trying to do some sort of backup of his hard drive and the "backup" ended up removed from his C: drive and is now on OneDrive. (And, yes, I do remotely manage his backups. He's stubborn and I believe was trying to do it himself but will not admit it). While Edge is on his machine. It's hidden from him and he is strictly instructed to use Firefox. Obviously, given age, distance and the lack of an available whisky bottle, I didn't need to get into how such sorcery occurred. It happened.

Obviously, I've got to now download everything back from OneDrive to his C: drive. I can do that easily via remote (hopefully...).

What I'm looking for is a solution to keep him from ever being able to access OneDrive. The caveat it that Mr. jsnydcsa Snr. is one of my five "authorized users" of my Microsoft account (so that he has access to Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.). OneDrive, and it's storage, are part of this Microsoft package. I believe his device has to stay logged in to his Microsoft account for all sorts of reasons (Windows and Office updates, amoungst other things). But, I'm sure that, by virtue of being logged into the account, his computer happily tells him (ahem ... tricks him) to use his OneDrive storage. If anyone has a practical solution that is "trick-proof" to keep him away from OneDrive, I'd appreciate some tips.

Thanks. Time for a whisky.