OneDrive shared folder shortcut stopped working as expected

Anonymous
2025-02-23T05:20:55+00:00

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.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. 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>

           [![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/0bbc0cf7-be63-4d3d-9625-9f034f999c0e?platform=QnA "filestore.community.support.microsoft.com")

    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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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-25T09:51:21+00:00

    "...the problem you described above that OneDrive shared folders appear as "direct internet access" is a hot issue that has occurred recently."

    Not sure what "recently" means, but I had this same problem several months ago and had to spend several days recovering lost files that were not being synced to my PC and that became linked folders instead. Eventually I had to change computers and completely reinstall onedrive and resync all folders.

    Here's a thread below about the problem from back in June 2024, with 10 pages of complaints / comments. The complaints continued for months and there was never a resolution.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/issue-with-onedrive-desktop-app-shared-folders/ebc649e0-2c90-44a6-9b56-c9205d5e0092

    Can you confirm after looking at that thread (which describes seemingly the exact same problem), that this is somehow different and will in fact be resolved (before I spend another couple hundred hours finding and implementing a new way to share folders with my family)?

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-25T19:44:55+00:00

    Same here. I am at the third onedrive account to share my files and encounter this problem again. This "recent" problem is from encountered first time last year in February or March to me. So it is that recently...

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-02-25T21:13:01+00:00

    Things seem to have been magically fixed. I am now able to see the shared folder from explorer. Seems like there might be a background process or something that's crawling through accounts? Hope the same issue will be fixed for everyone else.

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-02-26T19:36:10+00:00

    I was affected today as well.

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