OneDrive Documents not Showing up? 7 Useful Fixes Here!

On this page, you will get 7 effective solutions for OneDrive documents not showing up. Another way to sync documents to OneDrive is also introduced.

By @Zoey Last Updated September 30, 2024

Where are my OneDrive files?

As a professional cloud storage service provided by Microsoft, OneDrive brings a lot of convenience to your daily work and life. You may use OneDrive as your own cloud drive to save all kinds of files and folders.

Generally, where are your OneDrive files saved? You will have a OneDrive folder in File Explorer once you set up the OneDrive desktop client. Your personal files will be in OneDrive - Personal, and your work or school files will be in OneDrive - CompanyName. The OneDrive folder will locate in C:\Users\[username]\OneDrive.

However, you might meet the OneDrive documents not showing up issue unfortunately. To fix such an error and get your OneDrive files back, you can refer to the 7 solutions as follows.

Why are your OneDrive documents not showing up?

There are many causes of OneDrive files not showing up. Before trying to get lost OneDrive documents back, you can find out the exact cause first:

  • There are some bugs in the OneDrive client.
  • The local disk storage space is insufficient.
  • Your OneDrive documents are hidden.
  • The operating system on computer is too old.
  • Your OneDrive files have not been synced yet.

Then, you can find a suitable solution to recover your OneDrive documents in the following part.

How to fix OneDrive documents not showing up

If you are looking for a useful solution for OneDrive files not showing up, you can try these 7 different options here. There will be a suitable one for the situation you met.

Solution 1. Restart the OneDrive client

Once you met a OneDrive error, please try this solution first: restarting your OneDrive client, which can solve the problem in most cases, like OneDrive not running, OneDrive not syncing, OneDrive isn’t connected, etc.

Before you restart the OneDrive client, you need to close OneDrive completely. To do it, please find the OneDrive icon on the taskbar and right-click on it. Press the settings icon and click on Quit OneDrive.

After that, relaunch the OneDrive client to see if your OneDrive documents show up.

Solution 2. Reset OneDrive

If your OneDrive documents do not appear after restarting OneDrive, you can try to reset your OneDrive. Follow the easy steps here:

1. First, press the Windows and R keys at the same time. Then you will see a Run box.

2. Input /type %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset, then click on OK.

3. After that, please reset your OneDrive following the guide it gives.

Solution 3. Relink OneDrive to your PC

Sometimes, unlinking your OneDrive to your PC and then relinking them can work if your OneDrive files not showing up in File Explorer. You can try this method by following the easy guideline:

Open the OneDrive settings page, and go to the Account tab. Click on the Unlink this PC option here. After this, please re-sign into your OneDrive account.

Solution 4. Clean up local disk space

Why is OneDrive not showing up in File Explorer? It may be related to your local disk space. If there is not sufficient local disk space in your C drive on the computer, you may meet OneDrive not syncing or not showing up. So, you can try to clean up local disk space by following the guide:

1. Search for Disk Cleanup and launch it.

2. Choose the local data to clean up. Then click on OK.

Solution 5. Check if your files are hidden

OneDrive documents are not showing up may because they are hidden. If you encounter this situation, you can go to the OneDrive folder in File Explorer and check Hidden items under the View tab. Fortunately, your OneDrive documents will show up after that.

Solution 6. Update the operating system

There may be conflicts in your OneDrive client if your operating system is not the latest. As a result, you can go to Windows Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update to press Check for updates. If there are Windows updates available, please update your system.

Solution 7. Reinstall the OneDrive client

If all the methods above cannot fix your OneDrive files not showing up issue, you can consider uninstalling and reinstalling the OneDrive app.

Just go to Windows Settings > App & features, and find Microsoft OneDrive here to choose Uninstall. After the uninstalling process finishes, download and install the latest version of OneDrive from its official website.

How to restore documents from OneDrive

If your OneDrive documents are disappearing, you can go to the Recycle bin on the OneDrive website to get lost OneDrive files back.

Or, your OneDrive documents may be deleted from the OneDrive folder on computer. To restore them, you can go to Recycle Bin or Trash on your computer to see if your OneDrive files are there.

Tip: Sync OneDrive documents to another cloud in advance

If you are troubled with many OneDrive errors when you use OneDrive to sync your documents, here we highly recommend another easy-to-use way to sync documents from OneDrive to another cloud so that you can recover data quickly once you lose it: a free cloud backup service named CBackup can help you do it.

● CBackup is a comprehensive cloud service that provides full backup and sync features including PC to cloud sync and backup, cloud to cloud sync and backup, etc. ● You can sync any type of file to OneDrive without any file size or transfer speed limit. And other mainstream cloud drives are also supported, like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. ● You are allowed to create schedule OneDrive sync with the Scheduler feature in CBackup. ● In addition to documents, other types of data are also supported to be synced, such as pictures, videos, programs, hard drives, and even the whole computer.

Now, you can get CBackup for free and here is the simple guideline to sync documents from OneDrive to another cloud without any error:

Download CBackupWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

1. Go to the CBackup website. Sign up for a CBackup account and log into it.

2. Choose the My Storage tab, click on the button to add your OneDrive account and another cloud drive.

3. Then go to the Sync Tasks section, and press the New Task button to create a new cloud to cloud sync task.

4. Next, press the Add Source button to choose your OneDrive account, press the Add Destination button to choose the target cloud drive.

5. After the above, select the Start Sync button to sync documents from OneDrive to another cloud directly and quickly.

★Tips: In addition to sync, CBackup provides many free features. Here are some introductions of them. You can download and install the CBackup desktop client to enjoy them for free:
Backup PC to public cloud: In addition to sync, you can backup files to OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox directly.
Free cloud storage space: Each CBackup account will get 5GB of cloud storage in CBackup Cloud.
Combine cloud storage: With this feature, you can get more free cloud storage space. It allows you to merge unlimited cloud accounts into one combined cloud for free unlimited cloud storage.

The bottom line

That’s all about how to fix OneDrive documents not showing up on your computer. You can pick an effective method among the 7 options. If you feel it is so complex, you can turn to use another tool to sync documents to OneDrive without any error.