Folders Shared with me are syncing as internet shortcut in OneDrive on Windows PC

Anonymous
2024-06-08T04:53:55+00:00

Hi. I had some folders shared from different users in my OneDrive account. I had added the folders to my OneDrive with Add Shortcut to OneDrive button from Shared folders in cloud. The account is logged into a windows pc and every files including the folders shared with my were syncing fine until yesterday. Yesterday night the shared folders were completely removed from the Windows pc and folders are replaced with internet shortcut. This is such a big mess. I have tried unlinking the account and linking it back, changing the location of OneDrive on my windows pc and tried to get a new folder shared to my account and adding it to OneDrive. Nothing works so far. OneDrive has a big part in my daily activities. Please help me resolve this.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2025-03-13T06:07:22+00:00

Here is the statement from the Microsoft OneDrive product group (Redmond USA) about the OneDrive Personal problem:

***This is related to a backend migration we are doing and unfortunately, we don’t fully support syncing shared folders in the case where one user has migrated and the other has not. We’re doing everything possible to accelerate things so that it can be resolved as soon as possible for users of the feature. When the accounts are migrated, there is automated logic that makes them go back to a syncing folder within several days.***I have heard, that shared Folder issue is gone.
The best thing is: WAIT and do nothing

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-24T09:48:46+00:00

    Dear Donald,

    Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

    Sure The OneDrive shared folder issue you mentioned becomes a shortcut is indeed a known and temporary issue. The OneDrive team has been informed of this and needs to be fixed urgently. Engineers are investigating this issue at full speed and working on a solution. I sincerely hope you can be patient.

    Since the Microsoft community is only a community for technical discussions, I can't participate in development-related content,but I found the latest channel where users can submit reports and feedback on this issue, which was opened by the OneDrive team:

    You can open the OneDrive mobile app, shake it, and click "Report" to submit. You can take a screenshot of the issue you're experiencing and provide a detailed description to the OneDrive development team (or you can also use the OneDrive link (onedrive.live.com) submit feedback about the issue).

    Image

    So that they can gather different manifestations of the problem that has arisen to fully understand the big picture of the problem and find a more complete solution.

     I will continue to follow up on the issue for you in this reply thread and share the latest progress of the issue with you as soon as possible.

    Best wishes

    Pyke.D | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-24T09:03:33+00:00

    Thank you.

    The first reply that is actually helpful!

    Shame on Microsoft!

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-24T07:52:59+00:00

    Mine just started today and both shared fodlers are now URL links. But it works on the iPhone via files. I did not think I had done an update, but will start to look around on my MB

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-02-24T07:22:23+00:00

    Thanks for the instruction. If I understand you correctly, this is a fix to get (new) shared folders to sync with the local pc again. Is there a fix to get access to the local folder that shows up as an internet shortcut without having to sync all files again? I have >500 GB of images synced locally and according to disk utilization they are still there (somewhere) but the actual folder is replaced with the shortcut. I would like to avoid downloading everything again.

    Has anyone tried deleting the shortcut? Or unlinking the Onedrive account from the pc?

    Here's an update on my issue. The local folder containing approximately 600GB of images, now replaced with an internet shortcut, had been moved to the recycling bin on my PC (Windows 10). The files could easily be restored to another location on the disk (outside of the OneDrive folder).

    This is catastrophically handled by Microsoft, as they deleted my original files! Some might wonder why I synced the images to a shared folder and the reason is that I don't have enough space on the main account. The shared folder, which I own, belongs to the same Microsoft 365 Family plan. And no, this is not for backup purposes. I do have multiple other backups.

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