transferring files between computers

[newlyretired]

OK, I did manage to extract the folders and photos from Pictures.zip
...but they have all ended up with today's date!
newlyretired

I don't think you should be attempting to download anything. OneDrive on the old PC means that its files are uploaded to the cloud. When you attach the new PC to your OneDrive login, it will auto-magically pull down the existing cloud contents to that PC ( depending possibly on what settings you choose for having files available off-line on that machine). You manually pulling stuff down is what is creating the confusion.

OK, I have certainly screwed up here!

The new PC is currently not logged onto OneDrive. If I delete the files and folders on the new PC and then log on to OneDrive will it automatically download again properly, or will it attampt to delete them from OneDrive?

newlyretired

[genou]

I don't think you should be attempting to download anything. OneDrive on the old PC means that its files are uploaded to the cloud. When you attach the new PC to your OneDrive login, it will auto-magically pull down the existing cloud contents to that PC ( depending possibly on what settings you choose for having files available off-line on that machine). You manually pulling stuff down is what is creating the confusion.

OK, I have certainly screwed up here!

The new PC is currently not logged onto OneDrive. If I delete the files and folders on the new PC and then log on to OneDrive will it automatically download again properly, or will it attampt to delete them from OneDrive?

newlyretired

I think if you delete all the manually downloaded stuff prior to logging in the new machine into your OD account, it will not delete anything in the cloud. If it were going to delete stuff, it would ask.

Keeping stuff on the new drive and then logging in to OD will probably cause OD to try to synch the machine to the cloud, and that would be bad news, given that you have changed all the timestamps on the files.

I think it will see the existing cloud files and an empty local OD to which it will synch from the cloud, but you may have to tell it what folders you want available off-line on the new PC before it will download anything. That's certainly how it works if you attach a phone to your OD account, but it may see phones as a special case ( where you are highly unlikely to want everything ).

[Infrasonic]

That eleven forums link I posted upthread had quite a few OneDrive tutorials including how to reset accounts etc. Have a read through them before doing anything else...

[jaizan]

I have just bought a new Windows 11 PC. I'm wondering what is the best way to transfer files from my old Win 10 PC

Assuming you have desktop PCs, my fist choice would be to open up both PCs. Unplug your data drive from the old PC and plug it into a spare SATA connector on the new one. Then copy all the files from one drive to the other. I'm pretty sure this will be the fastest way, at least if it is a SATA drive.