I am running Windows 7 on my Laptop and Windows Server 2008 R2 on my server.I have a folder in a share called systems - I use it to store system backups. I had set the share as an Offline File so that I could do the backup away from the network and sync it later.I have decided that I don't want to do this, and I can't remove the folder from my offline files. I tried to remove the Offline Files from Sync Center. When I turned Offline Files back on, all the folders were back, the one I wanted and the ones I didn't.My question is how do I remove one directory/folder from the Offline Files? and still be able to use Offline Files for other directories/folders?

Exclusions from offline files can only be set by file extensions so that might be a possibility to exclude the backups if they are in a specific packaged format rather than just being a plain backup where all files are in their original format. Look for this setting in gpedit.msc (or the domain GPO editor) under Computer Configuration > Administrative templates > Network > Offline files. An option is to move the system backups to another share.

That works for this one case. There should be a generic answer. I mean, I set a folder to be available offline for one project, that project ends, I no longer need that folder available all the time. I should be able to release the resources used for that folder and set a new one up for the next project. Did Microsoft miss it on this one? or is this not a reasonable expectation in today's team and project based business world?

When you choose to make the the higheset level of the share available offline you take away the possiblity to remove subfolders from offline files. It should work the way you want if you do not make the entire share available offline, but instead just select the subfolders on the share that you want available offline.

so how do I fix it now, that the top layer was aleady made available offline?So far this has not been very helpful.

If you manually made the top level available offline you can right click the top level in Windows Explorer and select to not make it available offline. After that you must right click any folder below the top level that you want available offline.

Tried that before I made my first post! If that had worked I would be posting here.

Tried that before I made my first post! If that had worked I would be posting here. It seems that I have the same problem. I disabled the offline option and I still have a lot of space of my HD with files I can't remove.Do you have any solution?

I tried removing a folder from offline files a while back and run into the same problems. In the end had to reenitialize the offline file cache: Open up registry editor (WARNING: Only for Advanced Users) Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc Add a new key (folder) called Parameters Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc\Parameters, add a new DWORD called FormatDatabase and set its value to 1 Hope this helps.

This worked a treat thanks