GIS Programming

Fall 2026

OneDrive & Data Science: Avoiding “Empty File” Errors

The Problem

OneDrive’s Files On-Demand feature keeps files as cloud-only placeholders to save disk space. They show up in File Explorer with a normal name and size, but the actual bytes aren’t on your hard drive until something requests them.

GUI apps (Word, Excel, Photos, etc.) know how to trigger a download automatically when opened. Most data science tools — Python, R, command-line utilities, Jupyter, etc. — do not reliably trigger this. The result: FileNotFoundError, permission errors, or files that read as empty/zero-byte, even though Explorer shows them as present. OneDrive can totally bork a git repo!

Solutions

Option A: Keep All OneDrive Files Downloaded Locally

Forces every file in your OneDrive folder to stay fully downloaded, disabling the placeholder behavior.

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. In the left sidebar, right-click OneDrive.
  3. Select Always keep on this device.
  4. Wait for sync to finish — a checkmark icon will replace the cloud icon on all files.

Trade-off: Uses full local disk space equal to your OneDrive storage. Fine for moderate amounts of data; may be a problem if you’re storing very large datasets in OneDrive.

Option B: Point Known Folders Back to Your Local Home Directory

Un-redirects Documents/Desktop/Pictures from OneDrive so they live in your normal Windows user profile instead — this is how a non-university-managed laptop is typically set up.

  1. Click the OneDrive cloud icon in the system tray (bottom-right, may be under the ^ arrow).
  2. Click the gear icon → Settings.
  3. Go to the Sync and backup tab.
  4. Click Manage backup.
  5. For each folder (Desktop, Documents, Pictures), toggle it off.
  6. Confirm when prompted — this moves the folder’s content back out of OneDrive into your local user profile (e.g., C:\Users\yourname\Documents).

⚠️ Warning: Once unlinked, these folders are no longer backed up to the cloud automatically. If your laptop is lost, stolen, or its drive fails, anything in them is gone unless you’re backing up some other way. Make sure you have a separate backup plan (external drive, manual OneDrive uploads, git repos, etc.) before doing this.