Undoing special folder names

I configured the OneDrive Personal (not Business) app to sync all my OneDrive folders. Given that I have a specific folder for audio and another for home video, I decided to change the location of the Windows special folders called 'Music' and 'Video' to the two OneDrive locations. All looked good in the lefthand pane of File Explorer, but when expanded the righthand pane I found that 'Audio' had been renamed to 'Music', and 'Home Video' to 'Video'.

Changing these locations back to their original targets without moving any files was successful (confirmed when opening them from the File Explorer lefthand pane), but the 'Music' and 'Video' renaming still prevails in OneDrive - apart from when I click on the URLs for these folders at the top of File Explorer whereupon I see that in fact, they are still correctly named 'Audio' and 'Home Video'. This is the same as they are correctly named when OneDrive is opened in a web browser.

Something clearly didn't completely 'undo' when I corrected what I found, but the question is what?
To my surprise, the special folder names are also preserved by my backup utility (the excellent Bvckup2) instead of the 'true' names being used.

I presume that registry editing will be needed, but experience of what to edit and what not, would be appreciated, please.
Yes, I have a system clone already made and stored on another NVMe drive as part of my routine housekeeping.

Thank you for any help given.

[Edited to add that of course I can live with what I have, but it isn't right so I want to fix it. It is as simple as that.]

That is correct. Onedrive backup and sync requires the naming convention of Music and Videos as this is the default names for these user folders. Audio and Home Video are not default folder names. To sync folders with non-standard default user folder names requires the use of junction points.

Thank you, glasskuter. My point is that I want to treat my audio and home video folders as normal folders the same as any other. They just happen to contain this media. It would have been nice to map the special folder names in the way I tried for ease of access from the left navigator, but given that this changes the displayed folder names I prefer to 'unmap' and have them just as dumb folders with their original names.

I tried to do this by remapping the special folders back to their original .../user/... targets, which worked in terms of those targets, but the OneDrive folder have kept the special names *as well as* the newly mapped folders having them. Sorry I didn't stress this point originally.

How to undo the effect of what appears to be incomplete logic (half undoing the mapping), if not a bug, please?

Cheers.

Aero said:

but the OneDrive folder have kept the special names *as well as* the newly mapped folders having them.

Click to expand...

Since I do not know exactly what you have done or how you did it, here's what I suggest.
Login to onedrive on the web. Sign in - Microsoft OneDrive
Do you have Music and Audio, Videos and Home Video folders there? Are your files in BOTH those folders? If so, deleting the Audio and Home Video Folders. should not affect the files in Music and Videos. When you delete the 2 additional folders they will go into Onedrive recycle bin. Verify your files are still in Music and Videos.

To test that what you're left with is working like it's supposed to, using file explorer put a test file in both Music and Videos.
Go back to onedrive on the web. The test files should appear in the same folders.there.

Something you may not realize nor have planned for so I'll mention it just in case.. You have only 5 gb of free onedrive space with your Microsoft account. This space is also shared with your outlook email. Depending on the size of the folders you want to synce, you may well not have enough onedrive space unless you have either purchased Ofc365 which allows you 100 gb onedrive space or purchased additional onedrive space outright.

Let me know what you find.

Thanks again, glasskuter.

I have 1TB allowance in my paid-for OneDrive personal account, so we can at least discount this. Infact, I have 6TB as I have a family subscription and share the root folders of the other 5x1TB allowances with myself, of which 2.6TB in total is consumed and synced with a 4TB NVMe drive. No need for junctions. It works superbly.

As explained in my original post. OneDrive in a web browser correctly show both folders in question with their correct (non-special) names. Audio, and Home Video. It is only in the righthand pane of File Explorer and when copied by Bvckup2 to a network share that they show as special names Music and Video respectively.

For each of the two special folders, all I did was right mouse button Properties, Location, and then change the location to the OneDrive location. When prompted I elected not to move any files (there weren't any anyway).

On realising that the folders had now assumed the special names (at least to see, but not in reality) in OneDrive when seen in the righthand pane, I did the same thing to revert both special folders back to their original locations.

This worked, but when seen in OneDrive in File Explorer the special folder names are still used. Not though when clicked (the true name is then seen in the URL), or in OneDrive web (correct name).

Let me try renaming the folders in a Web browser and see if this breaks the historical connection with special names.

Another question, Did you set up music and videos to be files on demand? Enable or Disable OneDrive Files On-Demand in Windows 11 Tutorial

Yes. 'Always keep on this device'. I just double-checked checked both folders. No files on demand.

Renaming 'Audio' to 'Audio1' in OneDrive web was picked up in a heartbeat and reflected in File Explorer when I look at the URL (click on it, whereupon Music changes to F:\path....\Audio1), but it still displays as Music in the body of the righthand pane.

Edited to add that in File Explorer, if I right mouse button Properties and try to rename from Music to Audio, it fails with a message that a folder called Audio already exists. It does. This one.

If I rename to AudioX, it succeeds as a 'special name' and the folder now says AudioX, but still with the Music icon and still called Audio (of course, it is correct) when opened.