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# List of special-purpose folders in One­Drive and how to recreate them
- URL: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-onedrive-special-folders/
- Published: 2015-07-17T00:14:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-23T22:10:30.000Z
- Description: Recreate any missing special-purpose folders in Microsoft OneDrive by following these single-click folder-recreation links.
- Author: Daniel Aleksandersen
- Tags: Backup

Recreate or link to special-purpose folders in OneDrive from the Web. Like your user home folder in Windows, Microsoft populates your OneDrive online file-hosting folder with some default special-purpose folders. You may not have all of them without using special apps first and they can be tricky to recreate if they get lost. Here is a list of all the special folders and links for recreating them.

- [Apps](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=apps&ref=ctrl.blog)  
App specific data.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=apps
- [Desktop](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=desktop&ref=ctrl.blog)  
The files on your computers’ desktop.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=desktop
- [Documents](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=documents&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Default location for saved files from most of the Office apps.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=documents
- [Email attachments](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=attachments&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Default location for saved email attachments from Outlook.com.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=attachments
- [Music](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=music&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Folder used by Groove Music — formerly Xbox Music — to find and make your music collection available for streaming in the Groove apps. Purchases from Groove doesn’t appear here automatically.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=music
- [Pictures](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=photos&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Used by Windows Photos, Xbox, and other apps to store your photos.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=photos
- [Pictures: Camera Roll](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=wmphotos&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Automatic OneDrive Camera backup destination.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=wmphotos
- [Pictures: Saved Pictures](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=savedpictures&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Images originating from the Web or other sources than the camera and system screenshots.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=savedpictures
- [Pictures: Screenshots](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=screenshots&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Automatic OneDrive Camera backup destination for system screenshots (mobile apps.)  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=screenshots
- [Public](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=public&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Folder for everything intended to be shared publicly on the Web.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=public
- [Videos](https://onedrive.live.com/?id=videos&ref=ctrl.blog)  
Default save location for the Xbox Game DVR and OneDrive Camera backed-up videos.  
https://onedrive.live.com/?id=videos

If you’ve deleted any of these or haven’t used any of the apps that automatically create them, you can follow the above links to create them in your OneDrive account. Manually creating folders with the correct names in OneDrive may not be enough to fully restore them depending on your account history and localization settings on your PC, and luck. Bilingual users may be familiar with the issues of for example having one „Dokumenten“ folder in German and one “Documents” folder in English.

The folders **can be renamed** if they were created by OneDrive APIs (or the above links) and is properly recognized by OneDrive as special-purpose folders. In my own testing, I experienced issues when renaming the folders using the apps. I would recommend you rename them on the OneDrive website and wait for it to sync to your clients to avoid these issues.

OneDrive is Microsoft’s file-hosting service, prominently featured and promoted in key areas in Windows 8 and 10 and is tightly integrated with apps and these platforms.