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

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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
    2018-10-04T22:05:13+00:00

    i just want it to work.  it doesn't make any sense that you can't use the files you saved to the cloud??

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-10-04T22:06:04+00:00

    This appears to be a bug in Files-on-Demand feature, which I'd peripherally noticed when it deployed, but didn't really grok until now. It's the opposite of how I want OneDrive to work on my primary PC.

    I got the "bad user. no file for you." message today on a lot of files that were online-only (cloud icon in Explorer). Even after rebooting several times and fiddling with all kinds of settings and making sure I have all the Windows Updates as of 2018-06-30: Windows 10 Pro 1709 Build 16299.371.

    I fiddled with a lot of things to try to get it working the way it used to, including adding an Office 365 account (which gave me a blue cloud icon in the system tray). Choose folders was ghosted. The Files-on-Demand checkbox would not stay selected.

    The fix seemed to be trying to unlink the account (in frustration). Instead of unlinking and signing out, the OneDrive app immediately began sync-ing (the flood of sync messages was concerning, as you might imagine), which deleted all the placeholder files for FoD, and then began to sync all the files.

    Somebody from the Mesh team or Groove must still be cutting and pasting old code to try to resurrect this dumb feature. I get why some end-users won't understand how to selectively sync, but you really should make sure that the FoD feature works for everyone before you deploy it. AND LEAVE IT OFF BY DEFAULT as all "new" features should be. We hates it, we does.

    Problem Solved:

    Files-on-Demand is OFF. "Sync all files and folders in OneDrive" is selected. All my files finally got pulled down. Because I have no FoD placeholder files (a.k.a. online-only), I don't get the stupid error message anymore. On this PC. I fear that I'll be getting it on my Surface Book because I don't have enough drive space to sync everything. . . Here's to hoping that I'll be able to turn FoD off and get it to sync the subset I want.

    Oh i forgot to mention that you would think the Windows site could give you the solution.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-10-07T15:34:50+00:00

    I noticed the cloud missing from my taskbar, and subsequently pinned it to the taskbar by right-clicking the program app from the menu list. It immediately started syncing and solved my issue.

    Same issue for me. Searched for the app in my start menu, pinned it to my task bar, double clicked it to open it and it started working. It also showed back up in my system tray. I could then unpin it from my task bar. Thanks!

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-10-09T13:16:58+00:00

    If you haven't already figured out this option. If running on battery and choose best battery syncing for the One Drive stops. It will inform you this but took me a while since I realized this.

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