OneDrive: In windows 11, file explorer no longer allows you access to shared folders within "my files" or QuickAccess except as a link to the online version of the folder

As of this morning (Sat 5/04/2025) my shared OneDrive folders are accessible again in Windows Explorer on my Windows 11 laptop. The folders appear slightly different, with a blue chain link icon in the lower left corner, and moving files from my personal OneDrive to one of the shared folders is considerably slower than it was in the past (takes about 15 to 30 seconds now), but at least it's working again like it used to.

Files in shared folders that had previously been opened and cached locally are gone, though, and all shared folders are online only again, with files being downloaded as needed when I access them.

Looks like for me the wait is over, and I'm back to the way it was. Hope it will straighten itself out for all of you as well ... eventually. Why this migration (or whatever it actually was behind the scenes) wasn't communicated to us remains a mystery, though.

Since 2 days I have the exact same issue. Everything was working fine, I could access the shared folder within the Windows 11 File Explorer, and I was using it for my (photography) work on a daily basis. But 2 days ago something change, since then I can't access that shared folder anymore, no matter, if I add the shortcut to My files again, it remains a real shortcut, what opens the shared folder only in a browser. I tried all the suggestions I found, but none of them work for me. It's a shame, that this issue is present since 1 year (at least), and it's not yet fixed.

I have 2 different shared folders from different accounts, and one of them is still working as expected, but the other one became a .url link instead of an actual folder, I can see all the differences in the properties in File Explorer. In the browser version of Outlook there are no differences, so I guess it depends from which account the folder is shared.

Microsoft, please fix this issue, it makes my work way harder and much longer...

Thank you.

I did an inplace upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 - but it hasn't fixed it.

And yet when I share the same folder to a friend on Windows 10, they see it as a folder, not a short cut.

I don't know why it works correctly on some Windows 10/11 PCs, but not others.

I really would like to know how to roll back to before whatever broke this.

Come-on Microsoft!! What's the fix?

Quick update to my post above: I can now upload files to shared folders again in the OneDrive for Android app.

Also, on my wife's Windows 10 tablet her shared folders are again accessible as locally synced folders, so it looks like her account and the account sharing the folders are now on the same platform. I'm still waiting for my shared folders to revert from links back to synced folders. Hope to see that happen soon, now that the Android app is already working again.

I've just noticed a major change in OneDrive for Android on my smartphone. When I opened the app, it prompted me three times that "we've made some changes that require an app restart", and after going through these my three shared folders are now shown with a chain link icon in the lower left corner, and the + button to add content is back. The version number of the app shown in "Help & feedback" is 7.26. I haven't tested yet if I can actually upload files to the shared folders again, will do that later and add a reply to this post.

On my Windows 11 laptop there are still three linked shared folders in the OneDrive folder tree, and three duplicate links named "Foldername-Computername", both of which open the same respective shared folder in the browser. No idea what the purpose of these duplicates is. My guess is that these were created when I went through the three restarts in the Android app. The duplicates don't show the chain link icon in the status column, so they might just be files that can be deleted, not sure yet.

I compared two of these URL link file pairs in a text editor. The proper folder link URL file contains a different resid parameter that I don't recognise (although its first eight hex characters equal the last eight of my personal OneDrive ID). The duplicate file (which is older and has the computer name appended to it) contains a resid in the known OneDriveID!FolderID format, and I recognise the OneDrive ID as the one of the account that shares the folder with me. This change supports the theory that the content might have been migrated and is now identified by a different resource ID.