Forum Discussion
Sync external OneDrive shared folders
Hi,
I have shared a folder from my OneDrive (for business) to an external user (external organization). He has also an O365 E3 subscription. When he click on the invitation email, he sees correctly the content of my folder and can edit any document. But on the toolbar there is no "sync" button to let him synchronize my folder on his computer. How can I enable this feature ?
Thanks for your help,
Antoine
You cannot sync folders shared from a user belonging to another organization.
92 Replies
Another call for this feature. I've convinced one of my clients to use OneDrive instead of Dropbox for Business - mainly as they have it as part of their Office 365 Business subscription. But now I discover the topic of this thread and their clients can't work the same way as Dropbox, i.e. the shared folder appears as a sub-folder in their own OneDrive space. Worse, you can only edit in Word Online (for example). There is no ability to open in Word, edit and save back.
The reason I assumed this feature was available is that if you share from a personal OneDrive to another Personal OneDrive, it does work like Dropbox. Assumed that because Microsoft had merged the two OneDrive clients, that OneDrive for Business worked in same way. Fool on me! :-(
Another call for this feature. I've convinced one of my clients to consider using OneDrive instead of Dropbox for Business - mainly as they have it as part of their Office 365 Business subscription. But now I discover the topic of this thread and their clients can't work the same way as Dropbox, i.e. the shared folder appears as a sub-folder in their own OneDrive space. Worse, you can only edit in Word Online (for example). There is no ability to open in Word, edit and save back.
The reason I assumed this feature was available is that if you share from a personal OneDrive to another Personal OneDrive, it does work like Dropbox. Assumed that because Microsoft had merged the two OneDrive clients, that OneDrive for Business worked in same way. Fool on me! :-(
This feature is called "B2B Sync" and more information on it is available here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/b2b-sync
That doc also contains links to joining the Windows or Office Insiders program.
HTH,
SA.
Thanks Sven -
So let's see if I understand this -
Microsoft is enabling this feature but ONLY on a B2B basis - in other words, they will only allow this if both ends have a Microsoft licensed account. That's better but only slightly.
If I use one of the competitors - BOX, DropBox, Google, etc., we can share to someone without them having a license - they only need to create a free account.
There are some that require a license of course. The issue is maintaining those accounts and subscriptions. This partial method will help on occasion but is unpredictable - I might as well go about creating and paying for 'guest' accounts so that we know it will work. Although that might lead to email address conflicts with existing accounts.
Example - we have our sharing set to allow external users but the share to email must match the MS account to be used. This allows for better security and matching of accounts as you manage your shares. So what if the email isn't the same as the guest's 'business' MS account? Probably not common but that's one hurdle for the user/admin. What if they don't have an MS account at all? That's another hurdle for the user/admin. Oh, let's not forget that we have to instruct users to instruct guests to click the link for 'organization' account or they'll be lost down another rabbit hole. It's pretty ridiculous to allow web access but not sync. Users should be able to expect consistent behavior and not have to wonder if the share will work.
Again - I'm only trying to give users something that works and not have them coming back to me asking why they can't use brand X that they have seen which doesn't have any of these restrictions.
Also - am I missing something in this document? It talks about the Windows Insider signup but doesn't explain where it is used. The Office Insider link just spins. They talk about several admin portals for sharing but don't point to specific settings that enable B2B functions. Is there no further setup needed? Is it enabled for 'Insiders' only??
-Choking
We are working on a large study that involves sharing a large number of photos on OneDrive. We have added quests via Active Directory who are able to edit files and create directories. But they have not been able to move and reorganize photos as they need to. We would like them to be able to Sync to their desktop so that they could cut and paste files as they can with a GoogleDrive. I have people in my organization that want us to move all of our files to GoogleDrive for this reason.
When will guests have the ability to sync to their desktop and move or copy files as needed for them to be able to collaborate with us on this project?? Isn't this a primary objective of Office365? To allow multiple people within multiple organizations to collaborate on projects??
Thanks
After a few hours of testing, and 45 minutes of MS support call time, I can confirm again that there is no way for external personal account guests to sync a Teams Sharepoint folder in the OneDrive app. I also do not see any sign of this option on the OneDrive roadmap? https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=sharepoint%2Cmicrosoft%20teams%2Conedrive#abc
This is an interesting issue since it starts in Teams, goes to Sharepoint, and then OneDrive - which dev team is responsible? Or can there be a sync option directly from Teams?
This is really going more & more difficult to sync external libraries...
First we had to re-enable groove by adding the registry key to prevent uninstall of the "OneDrive for business" (aka groove) when installing the click2run version of Office (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/changes-to-the-previous-onedrive-sync-client-groove-exe-in-office-2016-click-to-run-3eff17b9-c709-462f-946c-17719af68aca )
We can still copy/paste the URL of the SharePoint library we need to sync, but most of the time, the sync start to fail and there is no way to fix it other than stopping the library sync, deleting the synced file on the compuer, restart the Library sync...
Anyway when it comes to SharePoint libraries created with Teams (Office365 Groups), the groove sync seems not to be possible !
This is really messy ! When everything will be available with the new client ?
Great Antoine that you keep this issue fresh. We are preparing to open a DropBox for Business account to support a few specific teams that must allow offline file sync with external team members. Obviously not our preferred solution, but we also do not want to get into the business of creating new Office 365 user accounts for every external user - they could add-up to more licences than our own employees!
Yes, something that I would really LIKE!
Oh, pretty please, make this happen, OneDrive/SharePoint team!
I've grown so accustomed to the new document sync that I can't really function otherwise. And yet now we have a client who requires us to keep all work in their SharePoint document library that they've shared with us... except I can't sync that to my PC, so there's no way I can work on it directly and will have to keep a copy locally and upload periodically.
The funny thing is I can see the "Sync" button in the document library, except the sync client won't let me finish the setup.
The sync button being there and "attempting to start the process" is the worst part. It allows customers/users to believe that it should work while blatantly it's not a completed feature.
You cannot sync folders shared from a user belonging to another organization.
- Thats the most perfect function in Sharepoint to control external pp download document in organization, I think!!
Wow... This is crazy ! We did that for years with Dropbox. Are you aware to any plan regarding adding this feature ?
In the meantime, I guess I have to create a O365 group (or a MS Teams) to use SharePoint sync (with Groove for external organization).
Thanks,
Antoine.
Agreed, crazy!
And to make it worse, this little tidbit is nowhere to be found in OneDrive Admin, O365 Admin, or any of the pages describing how to share to external users.
