OneDrive shared folder shortcut stopped working as expected

Anonymous

Update #2:

Found another thread that seem to be talking about the same issue: Issue with OneDrive Desktop App - Shared Folders Became Web Links

But none of them seem to provide solution to this problem.

Update:

Looks like there is already a post about this exact same issue; I don't know how I missed it when I was searching for existing issues. Anyway, here is the link: OneDrive shared folders are now a url shortcut (I need to fix it) - Microsoft Community

Found another one: Folders Shared with me are syncing as internet shortcut in OneDrive on - Microsoft Community

Looks like the issue is still active and there hasn't been any solution to it yet.

Hi there,

I have a shared folder from someone that I collaborate with and I use "Add shortcut to My Files" option so add the shortcut so that I can access it from my Explorer. This has been working great until yesterday. Starting yesterday, I stopped seeing the folder completely from my explorer; instead, I see an entry with the same name with type "Internet Shortcut". When I open it, a new browser instance opens and takes me to the OneDrive website. On the web interface, it opens the folder correctly.

Here are some screenshots:

In shared, I see the folder named "1-...", which is the folder that was shared to me. I then click the ... to open the menu and click "Add shortcut to My Files".

The folder is added correctly in My Files but it has the "shortcut" looking icon attached to the folder icon. Click the link takes me to the folder correctly.

In the explorer, however, it's showing up as "Internet Shortcut".

And therefore, I cannot access the content of that folder directly.

This seems to be a behavior change that I cannot rollback. It was very useful to be able to access the shared folder from explorer so I can read/write files directly from the app instead of having to download/download. Is this expected change?

Expected behavior:

A folder is created with name matching the shared folder name. Opening the folder shows the content of the folder.

Files can be read and write as if they were local files.

Actual behavior:

An "Internet shortcut" is created. Opening the shortcut takes me to the OneDrive page.

Files cannot be read and write directly.

Thanks in advance.

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41 answers

Anonymous

2025-02-23T10:09:07+00:00
Hello, Koco.

Welcome to Microsoft community.

Thank you very much for your description of the problem.

What I want to explain to you is that the problem you described above that OneDrive shared folders appear as "direct internet access" is a hot issue that has occurred recently. We have received feedback from users from all over the world who have encountered this problem. The issue is still in the investigation and remediation. OneDrive development team apologize for the inconvenience caused by this issue.

The details of this issue are explained in their support article-<Add and sync shared folders to OneDrive for home - Microsoft Support>
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Since the Microsoft community is just a community for technical discussions, I can't participate in development-related content, but I will continue to track the issue for you in this reply thread and share the latest progress on the issue with you as soon as possible.

At the same time, I found the last channel for users to submit reports and feedback on this issue opened by the OneDrive team

You can provide feedback in the following link to send feedback: OneDrive · Community (microsoft.com)

You can also open the OneDrive mobile app, shake it, and click Report to send it. You can take a screenshot of the issue you encountered and provide a detailed description to the OneDrive engineering team (or you can also send feedback about the issue via the OneDrive link (live.com)English only

So that they can bring together different manifestations of the problem encountered in order to fully understand the full picture of the problem and provide a more complete solution. Apologize again for the inconvenience caused by this issue

▲ I will continue to track the issue for you in this reply thread and share the latest progress on the issue with you as soon as possible.While you wait for the fix, you can temporarily visit OneDrive Web as an alternative.

Thank you very much for your understanding🙂

Best Regards,

Hannah.Z- MSFT |Microsoft Community Support Specialist
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