Forum Discussion
Add Shortcut to OneDrive still deleted SharePoint Online files
Hi all,
I am here to report something very alarming. I did an "Add shortcut to OneDrive" to three of our SharePoint Online sites that belongs to one Major Project. I moved the three shortcuts into a folder called "SWA" which is the name of the Major Project.
The sites had over 100,000 files so I could see OneDrive desktop app was struggling. At first things were going okay, but then errors such as "file path too long" etc started to occur, and I was fixing them one by one:
Same page from onedrive.com:
As you can see the one that has a red cross lost its shortcut icon in the folder. That was very strange!
As you see here, I may have added a shortcut again somehow to the root of "My files" in OneDrive, which also has lost its shortcut icon.
I was confident that they were not linked directly to the SharePoint Online site - I mean how can they!?
I started deleting this duplicate folder in my OneDrive My files. Next day I started getting deletion notifications which I had setup on my SharePoint Online site.
This is disastrous. How can this be possible.
Questions:
1/ How can a shortcut turn into a folder?
2/ How can that folder in my OneDrive be linked to SharePoint Online?
Edit:
Another thing I have noticed is, the folders I have deleted, keep coming back:
15 Replies
- I know this might not be helpful, but I want to say that this technology is certainly not without flaws, they claim all kinds of benefits, and advantages for organizing & securing data for corporate/business users, but there are so many problems, and errors we encounter.
- Thanks Mike,
What we learnt the hard way is that it is best not to add shortcuts to established SharePoint Online sites because of possible long file paths which causes OneDrive to exit unexpectedly and lose sync status. It's best to use it on new sites/Teams channels.
Best regards,
Michael
- You can create a Sharepoint folder link now that appears in OneDrive rather than as a separate SharePoint set of folders. Look at your SharePoint online site and you will see this option next to Sync. It's distinct from pinning a shortcut to your OneDrive Quick Access list.
That linked folder is just as much a synced folder as any other so if you delete its contents (as opposed to removing the link) then you delete the content. That is how cloud storage syncing works!- I added a shortcut to "Documents - C115.15 SWA" folder. My point is, OneDrive somehow changed this shortcut to a linked a folder within my OneDrive. When a user deletes a shortcut, it will not impact the SharePoint Online site.
- 1. How did you add the shortcut?
2. What does "I was fixing them one by one:" entail?
- need help
