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

Since working with locally available OneDrive files is problematic, you may want to try sharing files on a cloud PC. You get super-fast speeds, which may make file sharing easier. To get the benefits, you should work exclusively in your OneDrive cloud.

Hi Craig,

I am sure your comment was wholly well intended to be helpful, but I don't think suggesting people move to more reliance on more cloud service is quite the right suggestion for most people on this thread right now. 🤣 Gotta read the room a bit better. 😉

Found this buried this this crazy long thread. See THE CHECK section below for checking if your account has been migrated to the new system.

WHAT HAPPENED: Around May/June of 2024, MS started deploying a new version of the OneDrive servers. The old system is V1.0, and the new one is V2.0. They began slowly migrating people.

THE ISSUE: The sharing of folders and documents with local copies is incompatible between the two systems. Did MS know this? It's hard to tell, however, they never admitted that this was the problem, instead leaving people wondering why it's taken them 1 year to solve a problem that is critical to so many people. The number of reported cases increased as the migration to V2.0 progressed. In particular, for people, say, on a family account, there is no coordination between when family members migrate.

THE SOLUTION: There isn't one except to wait until everyone you share with or shares with you has been migrated. When everyone is migrated, those useless links should turn back into real files. Unfortunately, that means up to 300 million people's OneDrives downloading all those files again. The time to download all of that is probably not going to be short, as the bottleneck will be MS's own servers. Given this fiasco, you can either jump ship on Office + OneDrive and move to alternative Office and Cloud solutions, or wait this out. As this gets lost in the swamp of new messages, I thought I'd just repeat it with an addendum, because the proposed solutions are temporary bandaids, just lipstick on the gorilla. Some people are replying that even when everyone is one V2.0, problems still arise in synchronization. The best solution seems to be: Stop sharing the folder(s). Create new ones. Move all the content form the previously shared folder(s) top the new ones, and delete the old ones. Share the new ones.

THE CHECK: To know if you are on V1.0 or V2.0, use the web interface, click on the settings (cog wheel) in the top corner and select options. If the left-hand side navigation ends with "search", the account is still on V1.0, otherwise, it is on V2.0 There is a more complex solution using the inspection mode of your browser to check folders shared with you. (from Petr Vyskocil) Open OneDrive on the web, open browser's dev tools (F12 key), switch to network tab. Click on the folder belonging to user you want to investigate (yours or any of the shared folders). You'll see bunch of requests fire off. One of them will start either with https://api.onedrive.com/v1.0/drives/ (legacy OneDrive, this URL has been used since like forever) or https://my.microsoftpersonalcontent.com/_api/v2.0/drives (migrated new OneDrive).

Super helpful, thanks Josh!

Hello Craig,

Many thanks for taking the time to reply with this useful information, before I retired last year I was a for the last 35 years an IT security consultant an much of my day was spent securing cloud computing for my customers, many international blue chips. I designed many systems using cloud computing so I do know of the advantages, but since I no longer have gainful employment to pay the subscription for me, this option is too expensive for ongoing! But no doubt this is useful information for others, again thanks