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

Dear Microsoft,

OneDrive and Microsoft 365 is the only thing keeping us using Windows. Me and my wife have shared folders (we're not a business, just family stuff) and she's complaining every day that she cannot access the folders anymore. So, what we are going to do is: 1) buy a NAS, 2) cancel our Microsoft 365 subscription, and 3) migrate to Linux and LibreOffice.

Thank you very much, Micro$oft.

I think Microsoft heard my threat and decided to solve my problem. Suddenly my shared folders appeared on my wife's Onedrive, and hers on mine, and they're normally accessible as folders on Windows file explorer.

Hope the other users here are also having their problems solved.

There is an official notice on Microsoft support site: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-shortcuts-to-shared-folders-in-onedrive-d66b1347-99b7-4470-9360-ffc048d35a33

They already "conceded" that this is a fault months ago.

The reality is that you received an automated response from a chatbot and they closed your ticket.

I submitted this as a formal fault report to Microsoft Support and received the following response:

"Thank you for contacting OneDrive support. We hope you are doing well! We apologize for the inconvenience caused. We assure you of best assistance and anticipate your co-operation in getting this fixed.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We understand how frustrating it can be when shared folders turn into links to the website. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Our engineering team is aware of this problem and is actively working on a fix. Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated time of arrival (ETA) for when it will be resolved. In the meantime, we recommend accessing the shared folders from OneDrive for Web as a workaround.

For now, we are archiving your case. If you experience any further issues with OneDrive, please do not hesitate to write us back.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Have a wonderful day!"

So, they are aware and at least concede that it is a fault that they must fix ...

This is complete garbage, Microsoft.

I have a paid OneDrive service through a Microsoft 365 Family subscription. We're supposed to get 1TB each for 5 people and I had shared folders set up between two of my Microsoft accounts (two laptops) and my wife's account (her laptop). We had shared folders that we could transfer photos and such between us, just by looking in the shared folders in File Explorer and cut/pasting files that would sync between the machines. Then, like many, I noticed today that a few weeks ago (?) it suddenly converted these shared sync folders with files to web links that just open the OneDrive web view to access the shared folders and files remotely (and VERY inconveniently).

While that was SUPER ANNOYING and not what I paid for, whatever change they made also DELETED the previously syncronised shared files and folders on my C drive in the OneDrive file tree under c:\users[username]\OneDrive path, replacing the folders with web link shortcuts. This is Microsoft DELETING data on MY local disk WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. Absolutely outragious.

I don't care what Microsoft says about whether it wants to continue to provide folder sync services as part of the service I PAID for, deleting MY data without MY PERMISSION on MY disk has to be illegal.

same issue here. randomly disappeared. have spent hours trying to get it to work.

Microsoft "support" is worthless. online resources do not help. impossible to connect to a human. absolutely terrible service.