OneDrive Known Folder Move: Your IT Administrator has set a policy that prevents changes to known folders. Please remove this policy and try again.

Nothing makes my blood boil like nearing the finish line on a freshly re-imaged computer, only to come to a OneDrive KFM roadblock.

My past article talks about some gotchas with OneDrive KFM (Known Folder Move) and how to work around them, and from time to time I actually refer back to it myself. This time however, I found a gotcha that was…self inflicted per se. Recently finishing up a freshly re-imaged computer where I want to enable OneDrive KFM, I got the following error, but ONLY on the “Documents” area:

Your IT Administrator has set a policy that prevents changes to known folders. Please remove this policy and try again.

As part of switching from traditional folder redirection to OneDrive, you have to un-redirect the folders, which usually entails creating another group policy to undo the redirection policy (since apparently removing the redirection policy isn’t enough). As such I remove the redirection policy from the user, then apply a new policy that specifically undoes the original. Well, one thing to note, is that this NEW (undo) policy will also prevent OneDrive KFM from being enabled!

So once you “undo” the original folder redirection, and you verified that your Documents/Pictures/Videos/etc are now locally being stored again, make sure you remove the NEW/UNDO group policy before trying to enable OneDrive KFM for the user.

The “journey” continues 😉

For reference, find my other OneDrive KFM article here: https://www.junknet.net/2019/05/09/onedrive-known-folder-move-hurdles-galore/