Again in June of 2024, Neowin was alerted of a OneDrive bug by one in every of our readers, TReKiE, a couple of unusual OneDrive-related drawback the place shared folders have been discovered turning into web shortcut hyperlinks.

TReKiE, of their information tip, had expressed their annoyance, in addition to that of among the others who have been additionally affected by the issue. They mentioned:

Earlier this week I used to be alerted to a problem affecting a person utilizing OneDrive the place shared folders inside their account in Home windows became web shortcuts (.url information).

When working usually, the person would have the ability to open the folder and have the ability to entry the information inside (as you’d usually in Explorer), however for the previous week, the one solution to entry the information inside these shared folders is to make use of an internet browser and manually obtain or undergo hoops to open with the Workplace apps. This has damaged complete environments the place most customers have by no means even used the net UI earlier than, by no means thoughts downloading information manually or attempting to sync them in with the desktop workplace functions.

I do know fairly a couple of sad customers who’re prepared to leap ship from OneDrive over this and Microsoft’s whole silence over the problem doesn’t assist.

Following our report, the subsequent month, we had an replace on the state of affairs that Microsoft had been conscious of the problem and was engaged on it. It apparently had one thing to do with “inner error affecting knowledge synchronization.”

It has almost been ten months with no repair in sight nonetheless for the problem. Nevertheless, Microsoft lastly has one other replace on it because of a response from the Microsoft OneDrive product group, and it’s supposedly on account of a backend migration subject that the tech big is presently nonetheless performing.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t give any particular clue as to when this migration section might be accomplished, although Microsoft is attempting to “pace issues up”: The message reads:

That is associated to a backend migration we’re presently doing. Sadly, we don’t absolutely help syncing shared folders when one person has migrated and the opposite has not . We’re doing the whole lot potential to hurry issues up in order that the problem could be resolved as shortly as potential for customers of the characteristic. When the accounts are migrated, there’s an automated logic that ensures that they return to a synced folder inside a couple of days.

Please remember that the above response was initially in German and has been Google-translated into English. The response was obtained by a reader on the German media outlet Dr Home windows’ discussion board.

Supply: HansBrender (Dr Home windows discussion board)