OneDrive shared folders are now links, not folders! How do I fix this?

Anonymous
2025-03-04T11:55:09+00:00

I have a number of folders shared with me by other OneDrive users. I've added these to My Files to appear alongside the folders on my OneDrive account. Up until yesterday, they appeared as folders on my PC, alongside the other folders which belong to my OneDrive account. Now these folders that are shared with me are appearing as shortcut links instead of folders on my PC.

This has happened to 3 different PCs which are all connected to the same OneDrive account. I have uninstalled OneDrive, cleared the cache, etc. and reinstalled on one PC, but the problem remains. I've removed shared folders, had them unshared by the owner, reshared back to me, and then added again to My Files, but this didn't work either.

How do I fix this?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-05-03T14:12:12+00:00

    After a couple weeks of this issue, mine has started working again. OneDrive still contains those extra folders that were added when this problem came up. And they contain literally thousands of files in a folder that came from the computers sharing their folders. I'm not sure how or why it has started working again. I am hesitant to delete those new folders even though they are taking up considerable OneDrive space. Overall I am very disappointed in how Microsoft has addressed this issue with absolutely no correspondence explaining how or why this issue persists. Makes me very skeptical of relying on OneDrive ever again. I will for sure be looking at alternate storage solutions.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-05-03T11:18:11+00:00

    Did you actively take any steps on any of the shared accounts or they just reverted back to proper synched folders? None of ours are working.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-05-03T10:26:04+00:00

    I'm pleased to report my OneDrive is now fixed. Hopefully the same will be true for everyone else soon.

    At the start of the issue, the system created a duplicate folder named after the computer attempting to sync the shared folder. How was this resolved? Were the folders merged, or was the duplicate removed?

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-05-02T07:34:59+00:00

    I'm pleased to report my OneDrive is now fixed. Hopefully the same will be true for everyone else soon.

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-04-29T10:09:29+00:00

    This is beyond frustating, I've had some contractor's files shared with me which I need to acces through explorer in order to work and now I have to download it manually every time I need to work on them. Microsoft should have solved this problem long ago. What's left for us is to show our discontent and see if they do something on the matter.

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