OneDrive files suddenly have a brown box icon on the lower left-hand corner. What does this mean?

Anonymous
2021-10-25T10:24:49+00:00

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.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For education | Windows

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Anonymous
2021-12-10T19:36:54+00:00

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

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Anonymous
2021-12-08T19:12:16+00:00

Okay, so i did fix it myself, just one question, are is your onedrive connected? Because that was my problem

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-12-18T22:16:22+00:00

    I get the brown box icon since switching to W11 a few days ago, on all of my desktop items. But the icon comes and goes (replaced by the normal green circle with white checkmark), for no apparent reason. In any case, I don't see that the original question was ever answered -- namely, "What does this icon mean?"

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-12-24T02:24:21+00:00

    These brown boxes just showed up for me, not just on OneDrive files, but app icons, shortcuts, etc. on the Desktop.

    Not on all, but a lot. I opened OneDrive in Internet Explorer and now all the brown box icons are white boxes with blue arrows pointing to the upper right corner of the white box.

    I have no idea why they are there or what they are for. OneDrive has been broken in my Windows install since Win 10 and now I'm on Win 11 and OneDrive tech support could never fix it.

    Microsoft, thy name is not Consistency. Sure, let's trust all our important files to the OneDrive Cloud ... I dare you.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-12-24T22:29:14+00:00

    Replying to myself because the next morning all the boxes were gone. This does not give me any confidence that something was "fixed" however.

    Just unnerving Window random behaviors.

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