How to stop OneDrive automatically creating new Documents folder

We have upgraded two PCs and a laptop to Windows 10 and use OneDrive to synchronise certain folders between them all. It seemed to work fine under windows 7. However, under Windows 10, OneDrive insists on creating a new Documents folder under OneDrive - both online and on the PCs. We have tried removing it from the online OneDrive site and the PCs and have set the option to save Documents to This PC only, yet OneDrive continually creates a new folder after a few days each time we delete it. Yet it does not do so for Pictures. It is also annoying as OneDrive, after creating this folder, then comes up with an error saying that it cannot synchronise it.

There is a long thread about this problem on the Microsoft website, http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/o...0-41ebc7b0fc8e, but it would appear that whoever is answering the question does not understand the problem. I wondered whether any of the gurus on Tenforums had managed to overcome this problem.

Hello and welcome to TenForums!

The short answer is that as long as you run the desktop OneDrive App you will always have a Documents folder created on OneDrive plus a Pictures folder which may also contain screenshots, camera roll or camera imports folders. These are folders which Microsoft deem necessary and they therefore add them whether you want them or not, the camera folders are related to your use of the Photos app or the Camera app in W10.

I suspected as much. I had just hoped that there may be a way round it.
Thanks

Well, this ancient topic is the #1 Bing result for "OneDrive keeps creating Documents folder". There is still no true answer for this question, but I have found a workaround.

The offending folder is (re)created by the OneDrive desktop application, not OneDrive itself. While there is (still...) no way to tell it to stop creating the freaking folder, we can tell Windows to deny it permission. I believe you'll need to be an admin for this.

Step 1: Locate the root OneDrive folder on your computer. It's located in C:\Users\Onedrive by default.
Step 2: Right click it and open properties, go to the security tab, click advanced.
Step 3: Click add, then click "Select a principal."
Step 4: type "everyone" sans quotes in the box, then hit enter or click okay.
Step 5: change "type" to deny and "applies to" to "this folder only".
Step 6: uncheck all the basic permissions, then click "show advanced permissions".
Step 7: check "Create folders / append data", click okay.
Step 8: Click Ok again (or apply, then Ok).
Step 9: Go to the OneDrive folder on your computer and try to create a folder.

If you get an "access denied" error, well done. The OneDrive app runs on your user account and is denied the permission to create folders, thus it won't be allowed to create that blasted documents folder anymore! Make sure that you can create folders inside existing subfolders in OneDrive (if not, you may have forgotten to set it to "this folder only".

The drawback is that this also stops you from creating new folders in the OneDrive root (and if you create them from OneDrive itself, the app won't be allowed to create those folders. Hence, you'll have to restore your permissions if you want to create new folders in the OneDrive root.

This also only stops the OneDrive app on this specific computer - if you use the OneDrive app on more than one PC you'll have to do this on all of them.