Forum Discussion
Include files in OneDrive sync without copying them
Hi John.
This feature is not available natively at the moment, but luckily there is a very effective workaround (if you are using NTFS as the local file system).
You should simply create in the local sync folder a symbolic link to the folder that you want to sync (which is located elsewhere) and such folder will sync as if it were a regular subfolder of the local sync folder (it can even be selectively synced...).
You can create symbolic links using the command line or by a wonderful utility called Link Shell Extension.
Hope it helps...
MSFT, please listen. Please allow us to list directories to backup. Simple.
Forcing us to play tricks -- links (broken), management software, etc. is a huge waste of your customer's time and error-prone. I don't understand how you miss these common use cases and don't hear your customer's painful requests. This forces tech guys to develop vulnerable utilities and others to just move to dropbox/googledrive, etc.
Please fix/respond. Thanks.
I think the fundamental problem here is that this thread wants to use OneDrive for Business as a Backup product rather than a productivity tool. Its not meant to be a backup solution. If you want to backup your files then go get a product that is designed to do that. If you want to sync directories of files so that you can work on them from online and in multiple places, then that is what OneDrive for Business is designed for. With the recent announcement of the redirection of Known Folders this gets even better. But I doubt you will ever see MS design OneDrive sync to allow backing up of random directories wherever they happen to be. Its not what it was designed for.
- We should consider also what is the difference between "Backup" and "copy to work with" use cases? The online file copy keeps being the same, a file, in a folder. So Stork conclusions are completely wrong
Paul Stork perhaps it's a little late since you posted this reply a couple years ago - but no, not backup. I have data across several devices and want to be able to share them across multiple machines (mostly Mac, but not entirely so). Since the devices are different the obvious solution is to enter multiple roots to sync with OneDrive. But the OneDrive app on Mac doesn't support that. I could use symlinks from the one and only OneDrive root. But the app doesn't follow them.
- My company has specifically advised me to use OneDrive as a backup solution. Whether MS intends it that way or not, backup is definitely a use case.
