Inside the new Files On-Demand Experience on macOS

Update from me.

TLDR - If you are using Screenflow, Final Cut or Adobe apps and sync the files with OneDrive I would recommend extreme caution before you take this update. Our packaged files are now corrupt.

I use ScreenFlow, which is a video editing app for Mac that packages up all the media and editing files together so they appear as one file in Finder. I store the files in SharePoint and use OneDrive for Business to sync the packaged files to other teams members so we can work on the videos together. We have to sync the files and open them in Finder because you can't  open packaged files in the browser, it will just try and download the package file.

We had the app store version of OneDrive Client 21, running with MacOS Monterey 12.1. Even though I had turned off automatic updates from the store it still installed version 22 today. Without asking, the new client removes the synced files, automatically forces a complete resync. After this sync, all the packaged Screenflow files that we have tried to open are broken. OneDrive has renamed and made copies of some .dat files that track the structure of the package for some reason. Plus it seems to include the explicit local path in the reference to the file e.g. '/users/username/'. So now all the references to where the files in the package are wrong.

This is bad for us because we make our money making videos for YouTube and our online courses. And from our testing, our library of package video files are now all damaged. Some don't open, some have items missing, some have renamed or missing content. So far there doesn't seem to be any continuity as to what state the packages are in. I know Adobe apps like InDesign use the same approach to packaging files, so you may see the same problems.

We've all been struggling with this for a couple of weeks now and I think Microsoft needs to take some responsibility here and own the mess.