Group policy won't let go when user is moved to another OU

[HCHTech]

I have a client with a Server2019 domain where I created a special OU in their Active Directory for remote workers. There are a couple of group policies that are applied to that OU, one to redirect user folders and one to set a default printer. Neither of these group policies apply to the "regular" user OU. So far, so good. When someone joins the remote group, I move their user from the regular user OU to the remote user OU and those two policies take effect.

Recently, I had 2 remote users who switched to full time in the office. I moved both users out of the remote-user OU and into the regular-user OU, and expected that both of those group policies would "un-apply". Their user folders would no longer be redirected and the default printer would no longer be set. This worked as-expected for one user, but not for the other user.

Both users now reside in the regular-user OU, but one of them still has their user folders redirected. I tried a "gpupdate /force" followed by a reboot, but that still didn't move the folders like I expected. So, I'm trying to figure out if the original group policy from the remote-users OU is still applying for that user, or if the unwinding of that policy is just failing for that particular user. A gpresult shows neither of the two policies is applying, so I suspect it is the latter.

I can't manually re-point the user directories since there is no "move" button on the location tab for any of the user directories - I suspect this is removed when a redirection policy is applied.

How should I troubleshoot this? Maybe unjoining and rejoining the domain would set it right?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Once in a while I come across this when retiring a local on prem server...moving the client to all 365 thus user folders will be in OneDrive.

Normally before doing so, I disable the GP doing the folder redirection, after ensuring that the "restore to default location when removed" radio button is checked in the policy.

Anyways...that doesn't help you.
Go to the users registry...
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Here is where you can grab the folders by their nuts and force back locally...

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yeah, I've got a small mortgage firm I'm moving into M365 off local folder redirection.

1 user, and only her documents folder... refuse to revert to the local desktop. I could reach into the registry but I'm just going to move her to a new machine, and copy her files into place and let the clean machine sync things up. That unit has other issues too.

But yeah, there's always a problem child. Redirected Folders were more reliable than the roaming profiles that came before, but Microsoft moved everything to Onedrive sync for a reason!

 

[HCHTech]

Thanks - both of those suggestions will be in my future. No reason not to move them to Onedrive for the user stuff, they are on M365 anyway.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

...,No reason not to move them to Onedrive for the user stuff, they are on M365 anyway.

Yup..very true.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Thanks - both of those suggestions will be in my future. No reason not to move them to Onedrive for the user stuff, they are on M365 anyway.

Onedrive into a Team's configured SharePoint library! Because then you get versioning!

That versioning saved a client of mine yesterday, and it will save them again in a month or two again. Because they live and die out of this silly spreadsheet, and people keep being stupid with it. Thanks to sharepoint we know exactly WHO was stupid, and when, and we can simply restore a past version to fix it.