Forum Discussion
Add Shortcut to OneDrive still deleted SharePoint Online files
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-shortcuts-to-shared-folders-in-onedrive-for-work-or-school-d66b1347-99b7-4470-9360-ffc048d35a33
"I was confident that they were not linked directly to the SharePoint Online site - I mean how can they!?" The feature is that they ARE linked directly to the SharePoint Online site.
Mike Williams deleting the Shortcut folder must not delete the contents in the SharePoint Online site. That's the whole point of the Shortcut.
- No it isn't. You must distinguish between DELETION and UNLINKING or clearing space. If you DELETE synchronised objects, you delete them everywhere.
If you want to remove the shortcut, right-click and choose "Remove shortcut". Deleting it does exactly what it's supposed to and what you've witnessed.That's not true. I deleted the entire folder (Shortcut folder) using my Work PC, and there was nothing deleted from the SharePoint Online Shared Documents. Above is my Home PC, and definitely something wrong happened.
I performed the exact operation using my Work PC. In File Explorer, I deleted the Shortcut. The shortcut got deleted. No impact in SharePoint Online.
The day before that, I deleted the Shortcut using my Home PC in File Explorer. There were some files deleted in SharePoint Online and as I said the shortcut icon had disappeared as well. Please check my screenshots in my original post. There was definitely an anomaly which I can't explain.
Your screenshots don't show enough information. If your work files were not online only then they won't be deleted (there's a message stating this unless you've disabled this). It's impossible to tell the sync state of your different situations. You need to familiarise yourself with this feature as I have dealt with so many people who delete SharePoint files when they meant to clear space or unsync.
I just ran tests with a shortcut folder - deleting the linked folder deleted the files as expected.