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I use OneDrive's File-on-demand feature.
Somehow out of nowhere, my online-only files (files marked with cloud icon) in my OneDrive folder are marked with this brown box symbol in the lower left-hand corner of each file icons. What does this icon mean?
Many options in the right-click menu are also missing from all files in the OneDrive folder (both with and without brown box icon), notably the option to control OneDrive file-on-demand like "Free up space" and "Always keep file on this device".
The "Status" column that shows the file-on-demand icons like Cloud & green checkmark in Details view is also missing.
I have just encountered this today for the first time. What does this icon brown box icon mean? I've tried searching and can't find any explanation.
A Microsoft file hosting and synchronization service.
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.
Hi,
I am not sure if everyone has this app, but I had the One Drive App, pre-installed for my new windows 11 device. On the app, just hit sync. Doing this resolved the brown box icon issue for me.
Hope this helps,
Cheers
Okay, so i did fix it myself, just one question, are is your onedrive connected? Because that was my problem
I am pretty sure this is an error that occurs when a files archive attributes become corrupted.
I found that deleting the files then restoring them from the recycle bin resolved the problem.
Alternatively should be able to alter the files attributes through the command line or graphically through windows explorer by selecting the file, right click/properties/advanced attributes and toggle the "File is ready for archiving".
Hope that helps.
Hello everyone,
I've had this problem since upgrading to Windows 11. On my windows 10 PCs I dont have this problem.
From my experience in the last two months, it seems it's a connection problem between OneDrive and Windows.
Whenever I keep the PC on for a long period of time, I notice the brown box appearing everywhere.
What seems to solve the problem is restarting the PC. I usually keep my PC on and almost never turn it off. So, every two to three weeks I get the brown icons and I restart the PC and everything is back to normal.
Hi there,
Maybe this will be helpful to you. I just encountered the same problem. In fact, I've had numerous problems since upgrading to Windows 11 just recently but I won't get into that too much. The root cause of this for me was a OneDrive sync issue. Because my laptop is having problems connecting to the internet after my Windows 11 upgrade, the OneDrive connection breaks. When my laptop goes back online, OneDrive sometimes does not automatically sync. For me, it was a matter of opening OneDrive, making sure that I'm syncing properly, and letting the sync run through those files. Hoping this will help someone. Now, if I can just get my wireless card to work properly after that update!