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Dear Microsoft Support,
I am experiencing an issue where many of my recently used files on OneDrive have reverted to older versions over the past few months. It is only today that I have discovered this issue. I access OneDrive on two PCs, my phone, and frequently online at work.
Typically, I notice a file has been overwritten with an older version when I check the version history and see two entries with the exact same date and time. Often, the overwritten version’s file size matches that of an older version from a few entries back on the list. There is no consistency in the dates and times when this issue occurs. It seems to be happening randomly. I've found that this has occurred with hundred's of my files.
This problem has been very frustrating and has significantly undermined my confidence in OneDrive. Could you please advise me if you're aware of any such issues and if you're working to resolve them. Also, can you please advise me as to how I can prevent this from happening in the future?
Thank you for your assistance.
Regards,
Michael
Edit: Further to the above, I've also discovered that OneDrive doesn't sync automatically between my PC and Laptop when I make changes to files. I have to quit and then re-start OneDrive on the other computer in order for it to sync and receive the updated file. It also doesn't automatically sync when I attempt to restore to a previous version. In order for it to update the file back to the pervious version I have to quit and re-start OneDrive (or possibly just pause and resume syncing, which I never tried).
A Microsoft file hosting and synchronization service.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I was able to restore my files from my iCloud account. I logged in there, found the files and restored them. It’s frustrating that this is happening but I’m very thankful I back up files to iCloud!
Yes, version restore theoretically works to recover the lost changes. The problem is that these reverts are happening randomly and without the user's interaction or knowledge. OneDrive could have randomly reverted some file, and next time you want to work on it, you unknowingly get an outdated copy. When saving the file again, you'll lose any work you did since the date OneDrive decided to revert to.
This would almost certaintly have happened to me if the file in question hadn't been a text file that I only add lines at the bottom to, letting me notice the lost updates. Maybe I actually did already lose data due to this bug, with files where missing updates aren't as obvious.
Separate backups don't really solve this problem. The old changes are seemingly safe, somewhere in the version history. But we may not notice when we're suddenly served an outdated copy.
After you edit and close a file, do you immediately see the OneDrive cloud icon on the taskbar changing to a cloud icon with the "double arrow" sync symbol?
Sorry for the blurred image —this was captured from my desktop taskbar after editing and closing a file. The icon means changes have been saved and synced to OneDrive.
The same thing is happening to me now. In the span of less than a week my documents where reverted to an old version twice(!).
Guess I better invest in a seperate harddrive and go back to making a manual backup of my files every day, since I can't trust OneDrive to do it for me.
A lot of people are experiencing this issue. The source of truth should be the most recent version, and OneDrive should not be updating the cloud file with an older version of a file. How can we escalate this issue to Microsoft so this can be fixed?