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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.
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
Craig, in my case the Excel files that I mentioned had updates on a weekly basis and reverted to a version that was months old with all the weekly versions correctly showing in the version history. Maybe it could be that I have been exiting and shutting down my computer before the last change was fully synced and maybe not saved properly?
Perhaps.
My understanding is that the autosave function does not work unless files are opened within OneDrive. You must manually save the changes if you work on them elsewhere. Are you working on the original files within OneDrive? Are you working on an old version?
Craig, in my case the Excel files that I mentioned had updates on a weekly basis and reverted to a version that was months old with all the weekly versions correctly showing in the version history. Maybe it could be that I have been exiting and shutting down my computer before the last change was fully synced and maybe not saved properly?