Hello there! 2.24.22 UPDATE: We've been listening to your feedback, and we've made some design changes. We're releasing a new version that addresses the most common themes and makes it easier to achieve the previous experience. Please read the latest blog post for more details. Two weeks ago, we posted an update about Files On-Demand for macOS and have received overwhelming feedback from the community. We have spent a lot of time reading your comments and concerns to understand how we can improve your experience on macOS. To address some of the common issues and doubts we have updated the blog with a FAQ. If you still have more queries feel free to reach out to the team directly on this thread. Thank you for your constant support and partnership! Team OneDrive Jack_Nichols gacarini Carter_MSFT

Ankita Kirti Thank you for the openness on this article https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/bc-p/3066588The purpose of having OneDrive is to sync across devices and backup. Since the beginning I chose to have most of my files on my Mac, for several reasons :- spotlight index (just amazing)- time machine backup- other third party backup- of course direct access even offline (working on the go) From what I read (see below) files will not be indexed by Spotlight. This is a MAJOR issue, that will cause me to stop using OneDrive and use alternate services. Even if I have elected to have a local copy of the files, which does not make any sense.Will this work with local file indexing (e.g. Apple's Spotlight)?Yes. Spotlight indexes everything that is in your sync root, but note that Spotlight will not fetch (or hydrate) files that are dataless. If you are looking for something in Spotlight that could only be read from the full file (such as image EXIF data), only fully hydrated files will be indexed.Spotlight will not index our cache folder." Can you please look into that ? Also the roll-out of the new OneDrive has been a real pain for us. I appreciate the openness but your support staff is clueless, and before doing those changes that go against our wishes, careful consideration and communication would have been appreciated.

Ankita Kirti Jack_Nichols gacarini Carter_MSFT Where are you? Why have you all gone silent?

Ankita Kirti Okay, so since we have to manually download everything in our bright new shiny non-automated world:If I tell onedrive to make a folder always available locally, does that also recurse through the contents of that folder and download 100% of the contents or do we have to do so individually for every single item in the onedrive folder?In my testing, the setpin option listed here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/files-on-demand-mac worked so badly as to be useless. Specifically- the /setpin option can't be used while onedrive is running, which means to use /setpin, you have to quit OneDrive, then watch it restart and quit every time you use /setpin. This is a *very* bad implementation of a command line feature. Literally makes it effectively useless as a way to speed up pinning things locally faster than clickclickclickclick in the finder.Will the FileOnDemand preferences key documented here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/deploy-and-configure-on-macos#filesondemandenabled be around for a while or is that going to get stealth deleted too? The implementation of this decision is to put it mildly, awful. I can't think of a worse way to go about this, and for no real reason other than "The OneDrive Team is very enamored of FoD, so you will be too" I'm very sure no one on the OneDrive team has to deal with this in a situation with heavily metered, slow, capped internet access, and that limitation in your design decisions shows.

Hi Michael,> From what I read (see below) files will not be indexed by Spotlight. This is > a MAJOR issue, that will cause me to stop using OneDrive and use alternate services. Spotlight will index the content in your sync root (the path in ~/Library/CloudStorage). That will include any file metadata there, along with file content for files available in this path. As far as getting the file content into the sync root, we're looking at ways to make this experience better, but in the near-term, if you want to force files to be available here, you can click the little "down cloud" icon to initiate a download. This works for folders too. For files that we already have in our cache path, this fetch should happen more or less instantly. Otherwise, we'll download the file from the cloud.I've also shared the gist of your feedback with the rest of our team so we can think about how to better support this scenario.Jack

Jack - I'm in the camp of having the Auto Save issues and I have the App Store version. Rather than uninstall / reset and install the standalone version, I'm choosing to wait for the hot fix.1) How will I know that I have the updated version? I'm currently on Version 22.002.0103.0004. Is the hot fix a new version number? Do I need to restart my Mac in order for it to update?2) Will this hot fix address the issue I have noted before - when saving a document and choosing "Online Folders" in the save as dialog... right now only my current business OneDrive account is listed as a possible location. By current - I mean that is the account that I'm signed into in my Office apps and on Office.com. But I have two other OneDrive accounts currently active and syncing - a second business account and a personal account - that I do not apparently have access to when using this Save As approach. That same limitation applies when I try to turn on AutoSave from a document - which I opened up from finder in one of my 3 OneDrive folders - the pop up dialog asks me to upload or copy the file to OneDrive but only gives me 1 out of 3 OneDrive locations as a target.Hopefully that description makes sense.

Files On-Demand for macOS QA | Microsoft Community Hub

152 Replies

TomMcDonagh
Copper Contributor
Feb 05, 2022
I have just updated One Drive and was very confused by all the changes. I found some explanation on thread https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/ba-p/3058922/page/6#comments

However in that thread Jack writes -

Why is it sometimes slow to browse folders in my OneDrive?

To save space and system resources, the File Provider platform doesn't actually create the files OneDrive is managing until the first time you need them. The first time you open a OneDrive folder, macOS will create them on-demand. This can sometimes take a moment.
To avoid this delay, you can force the system to pre-create all of these files and folders for you without downloading your content. To do this, open a Terminal window and type "ls -alR ~/OneDrive" (or the path to your OneDrive). This will ensure all of your files and folders are created, but not downloaded, before you browse.

I did this and this action started to deleted my files on OneDrive files my computer and online!! After about a half an hour of deleting I realise and terminated the terminal program. This is madness. I think I have a back up of the lost files, but this needs to be quickly amended or else many other users could lose their all their files.

Tom
FonsecaSergio1982
Copper Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
Got today 22.002.0201.0005 version and while trying to upgrade got error below even though my permissions and lock is ok
- FonsecaSergio1982
  Copper Contributor
  Feb 27, 2022
  Ankita Kirti can you help me with this problem?
dan_e
Copper Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
I'm glad you fixed the Autosave bug with the Mac App store version; that helped a lot. However, one more bug that's really bothering me: even though I've selected "keep all files on this device" at the root, many many files don't actually load until I manually navigate to the folder. This is bad because it means that Alfred can't find these files via Spotlight. Alfred is the main way to I navigate files so this is a deal breaker.

Why isn't it possible to have "always keep on this device" directly download the folders to /CloudStorage rather than to the OneDrive cache elsewhere on the device?
- rgb2022
  Copper Contributor
  Feb 04, 2022
  dan_e Running this script in Terminal will create (but not download) the folder structure and files which solved this initial problem for me. It's based on the script provided here .
  
  I don't know, however, whether OneDrive keeps the structure up-to-date as new files and folders are added remotely.
  
  ls -alR ~/Library/CloudStorage/
  - JayMarroquin
    Brass Contributor
    Feb 04, 2022
    And still no reply...
    Ankita Kirti Jack_Nichols
rgb2022
Copper Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
Ankita Kirti Another question - what do the OneDrive icons in finder mean now? The https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-do-the-onedrive-icons-mean-11143026-8000-44f8-aaa9-67c985aa49b3#ID0EBH=Mac doesn't seem to reflect the reality of the latest App Store build. The screenshot attached shows some of the icons for files I have supposedly set to "always keep on this device".
rgb2022
Copper Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
Ankita Kirti is it expected behaviour to get duplicate Spotlight search results for each file? One is the file I need and the other is associated to OneDrive. Also, will you be answering the other questions in this thread?
jrlaff
Brass Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
Since the last update that migrated to the File Provider platform, all my files are gone. I have read Jack Nichols' update from February 2, but I still haven't been able to get all my files to appear in the Finder.
As Jack Nichols stated that it was only a matter of seeing a wrong status in the Finder, I uninstalled OneDrive completely, installed the latest standalone version (22.012.0116.0001) and singed back in. After a long time with OneDrive busy (probably getting the list of files but not their contents), I was able to mark a folder as "Always keep on this device" and it started to download the contents. For hours. Once done, I went to check the folder in the Finder, only to find that non of its contents appear, until I wait for a few seconds. Then, navigating to one of the subfolders does the same: the contents only appear after two or more seconds.
The subfolders do not appear in Spotlight searches neither.
This is an absolute nightmare. What can I do to have all my files present in my OneDrive folder, and not waiting somewhere for me to open every single folder?
Fix it, for goodness sake.
jgreenman
Brass Contributor
Feb 04, 2022
Ankita Kirti Can someone explain why I am seeing this dialog in Finder? I have never seen it before. I am trying to copy a large folder, which contains a large number of items, out of my OneDrive folder and onto my local machine. The process never seems to complete and when I click on the icon next to the unfinished copy ("restart" icon -- curved arrow inside a circle) I am presented with this dialog. Is this an Apple thing or a Microsoft thing? I have no idea what is going on.
Pramod_Acharya
Copper Contributor
Feb 03, 2022
Hey, I use Mac mini 2020 (M1 Processor), My internal SSD is 256GB and I use External SSD to store my files, when I download the files it stores in internal drive (~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal) and creates the shortcut folder when I set drive location to external drive during installation. I want to store my files in external drive because I work with large files(3D and photoshop Files )
rgb2022
Copper Contributor
Feb 03, 2022
Our users are accustomed to working with folder aliases on their desktop for quick access. How can users create aliases for top-level shared libraries now? It only seems possible for subfolders?

And on the subject of these top-level shared libraries - my test migration went terribly so I had to unlink my account and reset onedrive using the included script. Even once this was done, it wasn't possible to delete the libraries which caused problems when signing back in.

I really think the migration experience needs improving fast. I don't like users getting a series of unsolicited folder permissions dialog boxes, followed by issues with aliases and AutoSave (for those using the App Store version).
gbfgordon
Copper Contributor
Feb 03, 2022
Just another voice protesting this disastrous change.

I spent hours on the phone with a charming member of your Tech support team who had absolutely no idea that this change had happened, and therefore no idea how to solve it. I was on the verge of formatting my machine and reinstalling from backups. I've lost two or three days of work this week trying to sort it out.

Now I've managed to find this, a question. Having only a remote copy of critical work documents is completely unacceptable. I could point our backup tools at the local cache by the sounds of it, but you warn that it might not be possible to use an older backup. Again, completely unacceptable. You've broken compatibility with Backblaze. You've broken compatibility with Arq. You've broken meaningful compatibility with TimeMachine. That's a dealbreaker for any commercial use, surely?

Just an absolute car crash. Unbelievable.
- jgreenman
  Brass Contributor
  Feb 03, 2022
  I'd like to get some comment on this from the OneDrive team. I suspected that the 22.x changes broke compatibility with Time Machine and Backblaze, both of which are crucial to my set-up. Is this actually the case?

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Files On-Demand for macOS QA

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