Why is iTunes for Windows downloading photos from OneDrive?

To clarify, the photos being downloaded by iTunes are not from my iPhone's camera roll, not photos I imported into iTunes, and not photos that are or should be stored in iCloud. They're old photos taken by digital cameras that I imported into OneDrive. Thus, they should be stored exclusively in OneDrive. They should have zero association with any Apple product or service. There is literally no reason iTunes should even know they exist, let alone need to access them.

Also, for the record, I do have iCloud set to download photos to my PC. But that doesn't explain my problem. That setting causes iCloud to download photos from my iPhone into a "iCloud Photos" folder on my hard drive. When that happens (i.e. when iCloud downloads photos from my iPhone to a specified folder on my PC) it makes total sense. But that's not the issue I'm describing. Again, I'm talking about iTunes downloading photos not from my phone, but from non-associated OneDrive folders.

I need to correct something I'd written earlier... I mistakenly believed hitting "Cancel" during the download would cancel only one file at a time. I was wrong. I just tested it again and it canceled the entire queue... Which I suppose means my problem is solved.

Nevertheless, I'm still curious as to why this is happening in the first place. There is absolutely no reason iTunes should be changing my OneDrive preferences to store local copies of photos that aren't associated with any Apple device or app.

@turingtest 2, my iTunes folder is stored outside of OneDrive.

That's my iPhone connected to iTunes.

I don't think iTunes is trying to sync photos from my PC to my iPhone. In fact, it's not doing that. It's only downloading the photos from OneCloud onto my hard drive. I never transfers any of them to my iPhone. Nevertheless, if there's a setting for syncing photos from my PC to the iPhone I'd be happy to check to be sure it's not selected. Can you tell me where to find it?

When I click on the photos tab, this is all I see is a noticed about photos in iCloud being synced.

I did some more digging and found the following option in the iCloud for PC app. I don't think this is the culprit, but I'll unselect it and see what happens.

There are two reasons I'm skeptical this is the cause of the problem. First, in practice, the only time the iCloud app uploads photos from my PC to iCloud are when I move photos into my PC's dedicated iCloud folder. The iCloud app has never uploaded photos from any other folders. Second, I have the iCloud app running 24/7, so if it really wanted to upload every single photo on my PC, it could do so at any point -- yet it doesn't. The problem I described above occurs only when I open iTunes, suggesting the problem is with the iTunes app, not the iCloud app (though I realize that may be some interoperability between the two).

Nevertheless, I'll try unselecting it to see what happens.

I checked and do not have an iPod Photo Cache folder within my Pictures folder. (That sounds familiar, so at some point in the past I may have had a folder like that, but I currently don't). Here's a screenshot of showing the iCloud folders installed on my computer. These contain only photos from my iPhone, photos that were shared with me by other Apple users, and photos from my PC that I manually put into them.

I want to back up and try to be even more clear about what it is I'm trying to do, and provide a bit more context for the problem:

I'm trying to listen to music on my PC using iTunes. That's it. (Notice that has nothing to do with photos or synching files across devices.)

However, when I open iTunes on my PC to listen to music, iTunes starts downloading photos stored in OneDrive (as illustrated in the screenshots above). In other words, I'm simply trying to listen to the album Purple Rain, but iTunes is insisting on downloading my wedding photos. That makes zero sense.

First of all, iTunes is not a photo managing or viewing tool. Outside of album artwork, iTunes has zero functionality relating to pictures. There's nothing iTunes can do with these photos, so it's not clear why iTunes would want them.

Second of all, as I emphasized above, these particular photos have never been associated with any Apple device or service (i.e. they were not taken with or imported into an Apple device, nor where they stored in or shared with iCloud). Generally speaking, if you want add files to your iTunes library you need to point iTunes to that folder. I'm 100% certain I've never pointed iTunes (or iCloud) at my OneDrive "pictures' folder. iTunes should not know or care that these files exist.

Thanks for offering some ideas. I appreciate your trying to help.

I think I may have found a way within Windows' security settings to block iTunes from accessing my OneDrive folders. If that works, it will solve my problem. Nevertheless, I'll still be curious as to why this is happening in the first place. There's absolutely no reason why iTunes should insist that I keep local copies of these photos on my hard drive.