A shared folder in one drive, cannot be synced to explorer. Option no longer available

Anonymous
2024-06-17T23:34:45+00:00

Good morning,

I am an experienced IT professional.

I have already confirmed permissions to one drive folders are fine.

And, one drive has been reinstalled etc.

The account in question is just a free outlook.com account.

Issue - You used to be able to see a sync option on the web access for any shared folders.

The folder was shared from another free one drive account.

This is no longer there.

I can add a shortcut, that is all.

And while the user can in indeed click on the shortcut to access files, the access is ONLY web access.

From my reading of other blogs, I assume that Microsoft no longer allow one drive free to sync shared folders to explorer?

And I need to advise my client to move to sharepoint. - or, a 365 business account.

Thank you.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-03-07T10:04:26+00:00

    Hi there,

    Same issue here since 2025-07-06. Premium users shares are still syncing, so the problem seems not to be purely technical, but might even be a licensing "feature"(!).

    Microsofts resources are moved towards GenAI and bread-and-butter features are starving. Unfortunately, this will be the future of IT.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-03-06T17:51:57+00:00

    Having the same issue here. Come one Micro$oft, do something about it!

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-03-06T04:48:23+00:00

    adding on to this thread...

    desktop will not show the added shared folder. This folder was originally in the list of Choose folders to sync with desktop, but after some minutes, this folder disappeared and no longer shows up in the list to check/uncheck.

    OneDrive online does show the shared folder in my list of folders, however attempts to move files into this shared folder with Write access fails. I am able to create the "tets" folder in this shared folder which shows i have Write access, but the Move here button is greyed out.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-03-04T20:00:55+00:00

    Of course. The folder is there - marked as being shared from someone.

    The same appears on windows explorer but just a shortcut

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-03-04T19:45:16+00:00

    Still not working for me ...

    If I look in OneDrive > Settings > Account I can see all my personal files and folders that are backed-up and syncing with OneDrive. That bit is working fine and I can 'share' data between my PC and laptop as normal.

    There is no sign of any shared folder at that point.

    I first noticed that 'something was wrong' when I spotted the entirety of my share folder structure in the Recycle Bin. Perhaps foolishly I attempted to recover it from there which Windows did but in doing so created an unshared copy in my personal OneDrive space.

    OneDrive seems to have fallen back to be 'personal' only - no longer supporting shared data.

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