Urgent: Files Reverting to Older Versions on OneDrive

If I may try to help clear up the misunderstanding – I think what Craig is saying is that you don't need to be actively working with the file on the other computer for it to potentially sync back an old version. The crucial part is only whether that computer has the file stored locally, and how often it's online to sync with OneDrive.

Yes, that's it!

When you look at the file in Windows Explorer on that other computer, does the status icon show a green checkmark or a blue cloud? And how often is that computer online? If there's a green checkmark, and the computer is online only infrequently, that could be what's triggering the bug, as it seems that's what's happening for a lot of people in this thread.

Yes, I'm wondering if that could be the problem. I do not know for sure. I worry about unsynced files that cannot update because they are not online.

Freeing up space on all devices, except on one that can sync immediately, seems like a great idea.

It seems to have been the case for me, too. An old computer that I no longer use to work with OneDrive files but still has a local copy of them, which I turn on rarely enough for it to have outdated copies of the files, but when I do turn it on sometimes writes its old copies back into the cloud instead of downloading the new versions.

That is good to know. Thanks

And just to be clear, this is just an attempt to understand when and how the issue occurs. It's still a catastrophic and inexcusable bug for a cloud storage software to have!

You got it! Microsoft has never said that it can be a problem.

I'm very much interested in this Microsoft product, which eliminates the need for local file copies. I get my File Explorer in the cloud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKG8r1NERl4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GjRtu7jeHQ

Thanks Craig, Daniel and MasterZymeth. I didn't understand at first until I digested what Daniel was saying. I was trying to resurrect an old Windows 10 laptop that had not been turned on for sometime, and I had forgotten about it. It now makes sense to only have OneDrive files on that computer in the cloud, or delete them on that computer altogether. My other two computers are used within a couple of days of each other, so I think that they are not the issue. As Daniel said, this bug could be catastrophic if an outdated file is not noticed when updating. It makes OneDrive unreliable. This seems to be a problem that others have been reporting over the last several months. How do we get Microsoft to fix this? Ross

Yes, I believe this is exactly the problem. For me, it was old files sitting on a Kindle Fire that had OneDrive installed. My solution was to remove the OneDrive app from the Kindle Fire and delete all of its data. So basically I now only use OneDrive on one computer as a backup option, but I cannot trust it as a system to sync files between devices.

If I may try to help clear up the misunderstanding – I think what Craig is saying is that you don't need to be actively working with the file on the other computer for it to potentially sync back an old version. The crucial part is only whether that computer has the file stored locally, and how often it's online to sync with OneDrive.

When you look at the file in Windows Explorer on that other computer, does the status icon show a green checkmark or a blue cloud? And how often is that computer online? If there's a green checkmark, and the computer is online only infrequently, that could be what's triggering the bug, as it seems that's what's happening for a lot of people in this thread.

It seems to have been the case for me, too. An old computer that I no longer use to work with OneDrive files but still has a local copy of them, which I turn on rarely enough for it to have outdated copies of the files, but when I do turn it on sometimes writes its old copies back into the cloud instead of downloading the new versions.

And just to be clear, this is just an attempt to understand when and how the issue occurs. It's still a catastrophic and inexcusable bug for a cloud storage software to have!

Craig, Auto-save is active on my computer. My thoughts on waiting to ensure the save is valid are now out the window. I had another case today where a Word document reverted to a version that was four months old. I double save occurred on February 20th. When i did the save at that time, I sent copies of the document to others that was the correct copy. When I opened it today, it had used a version that was saved as Feb 20th, but was in fact a version that was several generations old that was saved in October. Huh? This is now not an aberration, but a common occurrence. I have started to do backups of my files on a local drive. I can only do this if there is a physical copy on my computer, so storing files on the cloud only is not an option if I want a valid backup. I need to use OneDrive so that I can open the files I need when I am out of town. Also, because I have been experiencing problems, I have made it my policy to always do a manual save before moving on. While these files are at rest on OneDrive, they are reverting on their own. Ross