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

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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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3,079 additional answers

Anonymous

2025-06-17T10:30:40+00:00
Just to share my experience and give others hope - after 2 months my OneDrive is almost back to normal. I have to concur with the advice in this list that the best/only solution is to “wait”. Based on looking at OneDrive online, opening the options menu and seeing if the last option is ‘search’. I believe the migration sequence for me was user A then C then B.
```
    USER C
```
(share owner)
```
     ↕     ↕
```
User A User B

For User A, after a few weeks of being just a shortcut, I was able to right-click on the shortcut and select ‘always keep on my device’ and all the files downloaded to create local copies. Clicking on the shortcut now opens the local folder that is actively synching online rather than just opening the browser- so this is basically back to normal.

For user B, I can select ‘always keep on device’ and the checkmark turns green, but the files have not started to synch and clicking the shortcut still opens the browser. I assume, as others have posted, that this will begin synching again in a few days (hopefully).

I did clean up and eliminate as many shares and shared links as possible for each user once the file synching was disabled during migration. I have no reason to believe it affected the migration timing, but because we cannot control the timing, reducing the shares has helped simplify the recovery by reducing the number of files that suddenly start synching again.

Microsoft should be truly ashamed of their lack of communication. Good luck everyone.
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Anonymous

2025-06-17T08:44:47+00:00

Unfortunately that does not work for me
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Anonymous

2025-06-16T19:01:26+00:00

Suggestion

Create a new folder, copy the old one into it, redo the shares. The missing files/folder should reappear, or at least they did for me.
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Anonymous

2025-06-16T18:17:04+00:00

The problem continues and it is worse. Now my word files are also missing. Just frustating to pay a cloud service that makes you lose your work and files.
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