When I deploy OneDrive for Business on Windows 10 PCs, for some reason I’ve never understood, Windows 10 continues to show a OneDrive – Personal folder in Windows Explorer even though I don’t have one setup, for example:
This is confusing and a little annoying, taking up valuable space in the left Quick Access menu.
How to remove the OneDrive – Personal folder from Windows Explorer
Firstly a disclaimer, the following steps require making changes to your computers registry, this is dangerous and can result in a zombie apocolypse or worse, a blue screen of death. You carry out these steps at your own risk.
Press the Windows key and type Regedit and press enter to launch the Registry Editor
You may be asked if you want to allow the Registry Editor to make changes to your PC (say Yes)
You’ll now need to navigate to a specific area of your registry, the easiest way to do this is to copy this path: \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}
And paste it in the registry address bar which – frustratingly – isn’t labelled or obvious:
Paste the path \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} in to the box shown above and press enter, you should immediately be drilled down to the correct location in the left hand panel (you’ll see system.ispinnedtonamespacetree on the right):
Double click the “key” on the right that says System.isPinnedToNameSpaceTree and change the value from 1 to 0:
Click OK and close the registry editor
If you reopen explorer, the OneDrive – Personal shortcut should be gone, if not, restart your computer.
Hello Bob McKay. Writing you from France. After a biblical storm on Sept 25, my 3 win 10 pro pcs… when they recovered their senses… all had a despicable “Onedrive – Personal” on them, the contents of which had been arbitrarily chosen by forces unfamiliar with, or inimical towards, my uses of Onedrive biz. I’ve been making myself ill trying to find a fix. And yours is the first that I’ve seen that I know I can do… Because, as your approach made me realize, it’s that the damn thing APPEARS in Explorer that is hateful, not whether it continues to exist somewhere in its own little ether of futility. Just wanted to know, is the above procedure as applicable as it was a year and a half ago? Cuz I think I saw somewhere that they’re no longer supporting Onedrive Business. (That would be fine with me if they’d just leave it alone.) On-demand in Onedrive biz is great, because everything in it is listed, even if not on the pc. My folders go back to 2000, and I need to be able to keep the file structure tangible in my mind. In “Onedrive – Personal”, on-demand does not list what is not physically present. A first stage, maybe, in the Great Erasure.