My cloud folder is gone with all my photos. Also the folder with all of John's photos. Somehow none of then are on my computer either. All of my photo albums are empty.

For some reason now most of my old photos are gone from my phone, too. And what this means is that EVERY SINGLE PHOTO I HAVE OF JOHN IS GONE. Every single one.

I'm trying to restore my Cloud but it's asking me for a Microsoft PIN and I have never EVEN HAD a numeric Microsoft PIN. And my password keeps getting rejected.

I cannot lose ten years of photographs. I just can't. I don't know what to do. I have no idea what's happened.

hagatha, my husband is an IT director and he told me to tell you that Microsoft, Google and others have been under an attack all week so some things are being hidden as a precauition. They are also requiring 2-step authenticator to be activated if you didn't before. He said don't touch anything, click on anything or attempt recovery until you contact them. You could accidentally cause permanent harm by trying different things. He said it's likely all there still so try not to panic. They will assist you in recovery.

Hagatha, do you mean the Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage? Are ALL the photo albums on your computer empty? Or just the ones associated with the cloud storage? Have your tried doing a search for OneDrive on your computer?

Assuming you are talking about OneDrive, I did find this link for support...

If files aren't found in a search or in the OneDrive Recycle bin, they usually can't be retrieved. To have someone from support investigate, please provide the following information:

The names of the files or folders you're trying to find. If the files are photos/videos, tell us the date you took them.

Approximately when you last accessed the files, and on which device (e.g., PC, Android, iPhone).

Consent that we can search your file history for you.

If you’ve followed the steps in this article and still need help, email the OneDrive support team.

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=root&cid=E58F72F724460C9F

So, I'm back to this and still pulling out my hair.

I've got John's photos back on my Cloud. But what I want is for photos to be on my computer hard drive, not on the cloud, so I can back them up.

Also, I just realized that all of my own pictures, which I thought were already on my desktop, are actually only on the cloud.


Here's the thing; I cannot actually LOCATE my desktop. I mean, I can see my what is supposed to be my desktop, with a folder that says Pictures, and I thought I had copied pictures into that folder on my hard drive, but apparently the Pictures folder is not actually on my desktop. It's just a link to the Cloud. Not a single one of those pictures is actually on my PC.


I'm paying $75.00 a month for a phone I don't need because I can't get the pictures off it.

But I'm also very worried about my own photos, which I've taken over several years, many of which are photos of John. They aren't actually on my computer.

I would try to drag-and drop, but there nowhere to drag the folders TO, because the Pictures folder on my PC which is supposed to be on my desktop isn't actually on my desktop.

This is crazy-making.

Help!

I will be following this thread closely as I wondered about my photos also. I used that Pictures folder thinking just like you that it was on my computer, not the cloud.

OK, so you never came back and answered... so this is not Microsoft One Drive then? It is My Cloud? My Cloud is virtual storage for Western Digital cloud storage. I have a WD network storage device that uses it. We can't go any further until you clarify EXACTLY where this cloud storage really is. They are all different and this is important to know!

This will be easy to do once we determine exactly WHERE all these files are located.

Another thing I need to know is WHICH computer you are talking about. WIndows 10? Windows 11?

We also talked earlier about moving those pictures from your phone to your desktop. All these things can be accomplished, but I know you got distracted with other issues.

So, let's start with these.

#1. WHAT cloud storage are you talking about?

#2. WHICH computer are you looking for your photos?

This is on my Windows 11 laptop.

It turns out that the desktop I see in the File Explorer is entirely cloud-based, which is not ideal if you aren't aware of it! I have to admit that I have no idea what I'm looking at when go to File Explorer, but I am assuming now that the only files that are actually on my computer are what is listed under C: drive, and that everything else I see is cloud only and not saved on my computer.


The cloud is OneDrive. It appears all of my game saves are also there, hundreds of them! They aren't organized in any way that I can see, just a gazillion files in the One Drive folder. Yikes!


John's pictures are now visible in the Gallery that I see at the top of the window when I open File Explorer. As far as I can tell, they are not saved anywhere on the C: drive but they have been transferred from his phone to One Drive in the Gallery, wherever that might exist.

Whew! OK, now we have something to work with. In Windows 11, One Drive is enabled by default. Which is fine, but if you don't want it to be where all your files go, then you will need to disable it. HOWEVER, if they are there and not just backed up there, you need to download all your files first. BIG question is do you have enough disk space on the laptop or do you need to use an exterior USB drive?

To do this, you have to exit out of File Explorer and open up your browser. Go to Microsoft OneDrive and sign in to your Microsoft Account. This all has to be done from there. Use the "sign in" link. It should take you right to your account. Scroll down to your files, click on one to select it and do a test and look at the ribbon menu above. There should be an option to DOWNLOAD. This can be done in large batches, but let's just do a test run. It will go to your downloads which can be found in File Explorer - and is not part of One Drive.

And just as an aside, all those game saves may be resident on your C:/ drive and just backed up to One Drive. They are scattered hither, thither and yon because the game is not installed on One Drive.

My laptop has a 2 TB hard drive so I think we're okay. I've only used half of it so far, and that's with multiple games installed.

Okay. I will give all of that a shot.

But first, I need to create destination folders for everything, since there is nothing actually set up on my hard drive.

Yes to destination folders. I "believe" you have to use your download folder first and then move them to the destination folder. I know if you use the download icon, you will. But I'm wondering if you can specify a destination folder another way. But try a file first and see if it works.

I've looked at the Documents folder on my hard drive and it is empty, so everything needs to be downloaded. Ditto for everything else, I guess.

I'll try downloading something and see how it goes.

I found the same thing on my Windows 11 laptop. I'm thinking you might want to disable or unlink your OneDrive so it doesn't just automatically sync your files back up to the cloud.

Get Rid of or Unlink OneDrive

Any progress?

I thought I had it, but apparently not. I dragged and dropped the photos from the Cloud into a file on my laptop. I checked and they were there. I checked again, and there's nothing in the folder! It's like they just put themselves back on the Cloud. More hair-pulling.



I'm about to try it again but this is ridiculous.

EDIT: Also, all of my documents saved on my laptop are removed. OneDrive is basically taking everything off my computer.

That's why I told you to disable One Drive before you started doing this!!!

hagatha, once Draclvr & others help you get sorted out, Please Also Do a Backup of your Precious photos and documents to an External source like a Thumb Drive, an External Drive or even on a blank DVD if you have a DVD Burner, this way you don't have to worry about your Photos, etc. being swooped away from your Hard Drive.

If I unlink it, though, my documents and pictures are now stuck on One Drive, not on my computer. How do I then get them back onto my laptop?

Starcom, I did just buy a burner, for this reason among others.

Also, I notice that all of John's pictures are once again gone from One Drive! All that's left is stuff from my camera and phone.

The same way... get out of anything in the operating system and go straight to the One Drive page. From there, download to where ever you want. But if One Drive is no longer set to automatically upload/backup, they will stay there. From that page I linked you to...





When you say they are gone, are you trying to access from File Explorer or directly from the One Drive page?

When I use File Explorer, there is absolutely nothing actually saved on my computer at all. Nothing. No documents, no pictures.

When I go into OneDrive, I see all my documents and most of the pictures, but once again, John's pictures are not there, just mine.


I also have a "personal Vault" that is locked with a PIN that I never set and do not have.


Also, I don't see an option to download files anywhere on the OneDrive Settings Menu.

I added a couple of quotes from that page I linked you to.

Did you actually try to do anything with John's pictures? You never answered back in the thread, so I wasn't sure what was going on.

By the time I tried to drag and drop the files onto my laptop's hard drive, those pictures from John's camera were just...gone again.


I posted above that i see no option to download files in the OneDrive Settings. I'm afraid to unlink OneDrive from my computer in case I lose things.


EDIT: I see that MS decided to put the option to download files under "Advanced Settings."


But what I find disturbing is that at some point I already turned off the option to automatically save documents and pictures from other devices onto OneDrive. In other words, nothing from my cameras or phones should automatically be saving to One Drive, and yet everything is.

OK. That helps a lot. I just had no idea what was going on! So, if you go into your settings, are then changed back to the default?

Not sure what you mean. I didn't see any default settings. I'll have to go back and look.



I clicked on "Download all Files" but the only thing that downloaded onto my hard drive was a file called "OneDrive Temp that contains more "temp" files that have nothing in them. No actual files downloaded. I'll wait a bit and see if that changes.



EDIT: Nope. The "download all files" command only put a file called "OneDrive Temp" on my hard drive. It contains a long line of script but it contains not one single file, not one document, not one picture. I see no other command in the Settings menus that would lead me to believe it would download my files onto my hard drive. That was the only setting with the word "download" in it. I am at a loss.

Please refer to the link I posted to find out how to get to your One Drive settings. Let me know what happens.

So, unlinking did not bring everything with it.

In my cloud all of MY recent pictures are in a Gallery (?) but not in a specific file on the cloud version of OneDrive and none of those are in the OneDrive folder on my PC. So I have some of my pictures but not all of them. There were two picture folders, in other words, and they had some of my pictures but the vast majority of my pictures were in a Gallery on the Cloud but not in a file and those are not on my hard drive..