We can't open this file right now. Make sure OneDrive is running on your PC, then try again.

Anonymous
2018-04-26T17:51:26+00:00

I keep getting this error message when I try to recover my files from OneDrive.

"We can't open this file right now.  Make sure OneDrive is running on your PC, then try again."

These files were on my windows 8 laptop, but it died so I put everything in OneDrive and now I can't access my files!!!!  Help!!!!  My new laptop is running on windows 10.

How do I fix this?  I need these files ASAP!!!!

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2018-06-04T12:39:51+00:00

I found that if you right click on the OneDrive icon (two white clouds) in the system tray (where your time shows) and then choose "Quit OneDrive" and then start it again from the Start Menu, it would let me access my files that previously gave the "We can't open this file right now.  Make sure OneDrive is running on your PC, then try again" error.

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-07-03T19:51:43+00:00

    I just saved a document on the One Drive and now I can't open it.  The "We can't open this file right now.  Make sure OneDrive is running on your PC, then try again."  How can I open this file?

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-06-11T15:38:46+00:00

    That's weird, I went to the Onedrive Upload folder like the howto-connect link suggested and I didn't have the OneDriveSetup.exe file in the directory :/

    I went up one directory and ran the OneDrive.exe file and then all of a sudden I was able to access my OneDrive files. No idea why I had to do this or why it fixed the "Make sure OneDrive is running..." error I was getting out of nowhere.

    Thanks for your help anyways.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-05T18:02:12+00:00

    THANKS!!!!  Overseas on vacation.  Your solution worked for me with one caveat...after switching to the non-VPN server (foreign server), I had to log out of onedrive and log back in.  Once I did that, all the little clouds disappeared under my files and they opened just fine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-02T01:38:44+00:00

    Thank You so much! This has been bothering me so much!

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