Driving customer success and satisfaction has always been one of the core priorities of the Microsoft OneDrive team. We have the privilege of working continuously with exemplary customers who leverag...
Updated Jul 23, 2019
Version 2.0
Blog Post
I’m sorry, but how can you guys spotlight Autodesk and talk about these great AutoCAD file integrations when the desktop versions of AutoCAD (that most professionals use) are completely incompatible with OneDrive for Windows?
The second you open any AutoCAD file that is in a synced OneDrive or SharePoint folder, AutoCAD creates two files (one .dwl and one .dwl2). These files are locked and cannot be synced. OneDrive warns users there is an issue with these files causing sync to stop. So due to this, the AutoCAD saved files, backups files, and any other synced folders and files will be seeming paused or randomly delayed from synchronization until AutoCAD is closed and OneDrive realizes those .dwl files have disappeared. Which, depending on how many SPO sites and OneDrive files and folders you are syncing, can take some time. After AutoCAD has closed, pausing and restarting the OneDrive sync can kickstart and help speed this re-sync process along, but that's a manual workaround that requires user intervention and leaves the user minutes to hours of sync behind depending on how long the AutoCAD files have been open.
Essentially: opening an AutoCAD file breaks OneDrive and SharePoint sync.
Microsoft: You can help everyone out with this! If OneDrive provided admins the ability to discreetly or silently ignore or pass over file types rather than just the block file types option, which produces red “x”s on everything and thus freaks out the users, this entire problem could likely be mitigated. OneDrive could then skip over the troublesome .dwl and .dwl2 files or any other file types that other troublesome programs generate. Sync could then keep going constantly and no logjam or window of downtime would ever occur.