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

Just to 'that guy' - using Family for business is risky because it's not for that purpose - you couldn't complain or claim compensation for loss because it's for personal/family use - school projects - things like that

Not that Business solves any of the real issues here - but it's worth remembering this

A lot of people using 'Family' for small businesses and it works OK but there's absolutely no comeback anymore than if you used the 'free' version of it really...

The only way this will be addressed is if

1 - people latch onto it and start making content about it - calling out MS for the lack of support/not being trustworthy keepers of people's data/ not responding to customer complaints etc. (none of this is actually news ofc.)

2 - enough people start cancelling (this is unlikely as people are likely paying for access to Office, not just Onedrive)

I suspect it will just 'start working again' - for some people at least - but I'm not waiting for that to happen and then for it to stop again...

Services like OneDrive are convenient and - effectively - free in many cases but when you consider that "the cloud" is just "someone else's computer" and I don't really want to use that anymore...

I'm even close to being able to kick Windows - just 1 or 2 apps left I can't use elsewhere - soon, MS, soon I will no longer need you at alll

I just tried creating an entirely brand-new Microsoft account for a brand-new email address and...

Doesn't make any difference - you can share a folder to it but the best it can do is create a shortcut for that folder - the folder cannot be 'seen' or 'used' on the desktop - or even from desktop (paid) Office Apps (no really - hilarious!)

I also removed all links/shares/groups from the folder and then re-created them to the same accounts - same problem...

I think MS have removed (deliberately or not) the ability to share a whole folder - and in doing-so has rendered OneDrive useless to most people using it (who's going to share files individually??)

This tips me into doing something I've wanted to do for a while - roll my own backup/sharing solution - as Louis says, another way of saying "cloud" is "someone else's computer" and do you REALLY want your files on "someone else's computer"????

Esp when they do things like this??

In looking at this further, I believe it's possible some users will have lost files entirely to this 'feature' - it's impossible to re-create this situation but what I believe happened is

User with access to the shared folder is working on files 'offline' - they're not connected to the Internet/Onedrive

User reconnects - OneDrive sees their changes but the 'change' which makes the folder into a 'shortcut' is newer so it just replaces the entire folder with the "shortcut" and their changes are gone - forever - no means of recovery

2 users of the OneDrive I've been looking at have reported loss of data like this and looking into this the last changes to the files in the folder are now 7 days old - but they were working on those files just 3 days ago (offline) - those changes were never synced to OneDrive before the "shortcut" replaced the folder

This changes things a bit from 'removing a feature without notice' to 'actively destroying user data without permission' and we'll be needing a MUCH better answer than "we're looking into this" at this point...