In this tutorial we are going to look at how to remove / disable One Drive and One Drive for Business from Windows 10.  This is particularly applicable with swapping over from using One Drive to another cloud sharing service such as Dropbox and you want to clean up the system as to not cause any confusion.  These instructions are also applicable to Windows 8 and 8.1 with some minor changes.

Sign Out of One Drive in Office

The first step is to sign out of One Drive in Office.  This will remove any connected accounts from the Save and Open Menu.

Step 1

Open Word 2013 or 2016 and choose a blank document

Step 2

Click on File and then Click on Account

Step 3

Click on the Sign Out Button

Note: You may also need to do this in Excel, Powerpoint etc… as well as sometimes signing out one application doesn’t sign out the other.

Clear Recent Documents In Office Applications

This is a good idea if you have files referencing your old One Drive location

Step 1

Open up Word

Step 2

Right Click on any Recent document and choose Clear unpinned Documents.

Clear Quick Access and Recent Files & Folders in Windows 10

Step 1

Open File Explorer

Step 2

Click on the View Tab

Step 3

Click on the Options Button

Step 4

Under Privacy click on Clear

Sign Out of One Drive Sync

Step 1

Right click on the One Drive Icon in the taskbar

Step 2

Unlink any accounts and choose to stop Syncing any Sharepoint Libraries

This will vary depending on what One Drive Accounts and Libraries you have configured

Disable One Drive from Starting with Windows

Step 1

Right click on the task bar

Step 2

Choose Task Manager

Step 3

Select the Startup tab

Step 4

Find any references to One Drive, right click and choose Disable

Remove One Drive and One Drive for Business from the Sidebar

To remove One Drive and One Drive for Business from the sidebar this is easily accomplished using a registry change.  If you are familiar with editing the registry here are the value’s you need to assign:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\OneDrive] “DisableFileSyncNGSC”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}] “System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree”=dword:00000000

Otherwise, here is a registry file you can download, extract and double click to install the new settings.

Disable One Drive Integration.reg