How to disable Files On-Demand in OneDrive MacOS? It's enforced since the last update ...

Anonymous

For OneDrive home and business, I cannot disable Files-On-Demand since the last update. This is crucial, I need full access to my files at all time.

What is going on? Why would you enforce Files On-Demand on your customers, isn't it enough to enable it by default? My 70GB of cloud data is not local anymore, sometimes I have no internet, you are locking me away from my files. Also making it impossible for me to do full text searches. Files On-Demand is also too slow, waiting a second to display folder contents is too much when you organize things in deep folder structures.

How I can disable Files On-Demand? Will you please stop knowing the best for your customers? We aren't toddlers. Thanks!

If Files On-Demand is enforced by policy, I will leave your cloud service once and for all.

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Anonymous

2022-02-17T15:16:53+00:00

I've stopped using it now, completely rethought my backup procedures. I can't trust a workflow where a company can effectively access my hard drive and remove files. I still can't get my head around them doing this.

If you don't mind KingJames1970, who did you end up going with for syncing files? I'm waiting to see if MS changes their stance, and also thrashing on which sync service to consider if MS doesn't address this.

I'm leaning toward Google One or iCloud. I suspect Google One might be a better choice, since our household is a mix of Windows + Mac.

Interested to hear opinions or experiences.
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Anonymous

2022-02-17T15:05:42+00:00

I've stopped using it now, completely rethought my backup procedures. I can't trust a workflow where a company can effectively access my hard drive and remove files. I still can't get my head around them doing this.
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Anonymous

2022-02-17T14:08:34+00:00

Files on demand is a huge problem who works between computers and runs any code. As soon as output is generated, the file is sucked to the cloud and the hard drive is left with an empty stab. I do not need to continue why this is such a terrible idea. What is worse disabling Filesondemand is not trivial and I am not 100% I recovered 300Gb of my files from this atrocity. I think it is time for a class action suit.
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Anonymous

2022-02-17T10:28:05+00:00

Yes, same problem here. All files are gone leaving only "symlinks", manually downloading files either produces the same "helper error" that's been posted here or just plain does not do anything.

I've been a paying customer for several years, but I'm about to give up. I wasted my whole day today trying to solve this mess to no result.

There are other ways to "get" office suite so i'm about to switch to dropbox or google.

MS you are basically forcing me to stop paying you AND break the law by this mess.
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Anonymous

2022-02-14T14:50:14+00:00
After spending too much of my own time debugging through their stuff, I did finally get it mostly working. I had to select all the top-level folders and select "Keep files on this device" (or whatever it says).

But it still has two issues...
1. When a new folder is added, it defaults to the files-on-demand
2. When new files are added to a folder (that is not files-on-demand), it shows the cloud icon next to the folder, and I need to click it to force a sync of the new files.
Been very frustrating working through it. Obviously this change was not well thought-out nor well communicated to users. I would look else where (Dropbox), but we do use Office products, and we're not exclusively macOS users. So we're stuck with OneDrive for now.

Come on Apple, fix iCloud!
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