OneDrive Appears in Explorer Even If “Prevent the Usage of OneDrive” Policy is Enabled

Even after enabling the Prevent the Usage of OneDrive for file storage Group Policy to disable OneDrive, the OneDrive shell folder may still show up in File Explorer navigation pane and File Open and Save As dialogs in every program, including Office.

According to the Group Policy Editor, this policy setting lets you prevent apps and features from working with files on OneDrive. If you enable this policy setting:

  1. Users can’t access OneDrive from the OneDrive app and file picker.

  2. Windows Store apps can’t access OneDrive using the WinRT API.

  3. OneDrive doesn’t appear in the navigation pane in File Explorer.

  4. OneDrive files aren’t kept in sync with the cloud.

  5. Users can’t automatically upload photos and videos from the camera roll folder.

However #3 doesn’t happen automatically. To remove the OneDrive shell folder from the navigation pane, you need to do one of these things after enabling the above Policy.

Run OneDrive.exe once

With the above Policy enabled, starting OneDrive.exe would automatically clear the shell folder from Explorer and Open and Save As dialogs. So, to clear the settings, run OneDrive.exe once. In a domain environment you may configure OneDrive.exe to run during user logon, using the RunOnce registry key or a logon script.

Removing OneDrive shell folder from Registry

If running OneDrive as above doesn’t remove the shell folder automatically, remove the following registry keys.



HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}

And delete the value "{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}" from the following key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel

Registry Fix

Here is a REG file that does the same.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
"{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}"=-
 

Hope that helps.


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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