This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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.
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.
So not a singel good respons from MS?
Is this not their own forum?
I guess this is the level of expertise and service one can expect from Microsoft.
After reading through the responses and the blog post https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/ba-p/3058922/page/2, I decided to try the following, and it worked to put over 100 GB files back without much network activity, since my files were already in the cache.
Run the following from a terminal (Launch the Terminal app and paste it there). It will show an error for each folder, which is useful to know which folders it has visited. Basically, it opens each file and reads the first byte, causing the file to be transferred from the cache to the actual location so that it can be read. The command took many hours on my Mac. The command can be restarted without harm, and quickly gets back to where it left off.
find ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal -exec head -c 1 {} >/dev/null ;
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.
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.
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.