Microsoft creating photo album for me

[somany]

Does anyone understand how they work and if so, could you explain to me if this would be causing me a problem?  

I have been working on my inventory--really going through it and getting rid of things that I will never list, getting rid of things that have been listed and never sold, etc. For some reason that escapes me right now, right in the middle of doing the inventory, I decided to pull all of the photos from my recycle bin back into my photos and then archive the ones I used in folders that I can access if I want them for some reason. There were more than 10,000 photos in my recycle bin. (I guess I was archiving them there before I came up with this "brilliant" idea.)

So when they came back in, they recreated the folder that they were in when they were deleted so I have dates back to 2017. I also have tons of photos in my "pictures download" folder, which is where I put pictures as I pull pictures off the internet. I have been working to clean out that folder because I use it regularly, but I don't seem to be making any headway. It actually seems like the same photos are showing up a second time (maybe even a third time). I have double-checked to make sure I am working out of folder I intend to be working out of (fearing I was transferring pictures back to the file I had just pulled them out of), and it seems fine.

Then I remembered I got a notification this morning that Microsoft(?) had created an album for me using my pictures. Has anyone had this happen with their pictures?  Is there any chance this "photo album" (or the underlying process that allows Microsoft to create said album for me) is messing with my moving my pictures from folder to folder thereby reinstating the pictures to the folder I just moved them out of?

I did find the album and was able to delete it, but I don't see anywhere that I can change a setting so they can't create more new albums for me.  

TIA.

[chapeaunoir]

I'm assuming you're on Windows 10. 

If so, I think that's the appxPackage app that came in with one of their updates a while ago, and I don't know how to get rid of it save either from the command prompt or the powershell as administrator. I haven't had this happen to me but I strip all of that crapware out when the new updates come in. 

ETA: Oh, wait - I double checked - new information in the last few months (Microsoft must have gotten the message that people don't want this automatically generated stuff they can't get rid of):


If you do the following I think this will solve the problem of the automatically created photo albums within the Photos App:



Open OneDrive (web version).

Go to "Settings", (it will be the cog wheel in the upper right hand corner)

Click on "Settings" to open it.

Once in settings, click on "Options".

Clicking on "Options" will open a menu on the left side of the screen.

Scroll down to "Photos" and click to open.

You will see this beside Photos: "Create albums automatically when I upload photos".

Click the toggle to turn it off 

[chapeaunoir]

Be sure you have photos you want to keep backed up somewhere else (cloud or whatever) before you do this as a few people from my reading about this have had photos deleted when they got rid of the albums.

[somany]

chapeaunoir, thanks! Since I have to make sure they are backed up before trying it, I'm going to wait until I get through the resorting that I'm doing. That could be a while. I finally got the one file that seemed to be repopulating finished so I will know for sure if something else pops up in there. I'm sure it's just my imagination, but I don't know why I would have multiple copies of the same pictures, and I definitely did.

[chapeaunoir]

Maybe replicating into those albums - geez, what a waste of disc space!

[zoesam]

Speaking of disk space, I sort of shuddered to read this post. Just an FYI, if you're not emptying your Recycle Bin, you are NOT freeing up the space. That may be fine if you don't have space issues, just a PSA.

I'm on an old version, so can't help with your issue, but if space is of any concern, you need to empty your recycle bin. I do it daily or more often, but I have space problems.

[somany]

Feb 10, 2019 23:17:56 GMT zoesam said:

Speaking of disk space, I sort of shuddered to read this post. Just an FYI, if you're not emptying your Recycle Bin, you are NOT freeing up the space. That may be fine if you don't have space issues, just a PSA.

I'm on an old version, so can't help with your issue, but if space is of any concern, you need to empty your recycle bin. I do it daily or more often, but I have space problems.

I haven't had space issues but was getting concerned that I would have eventually since I had so many pics in the recycle bin.  I have been able to recycle about half the ones I restored and actually empty the basket since I began this process.  It's been fun to look at the some of the things I've listed over the last three years and surprising how many have zero recollection of.