Problem opening (desktop)word docs in Onedrive (does work when opened via ODFB online)

corvus71I just diagnosed what I'm guessing is the same issue for someone and you might be seeing a path length issue.  I think something changed between Word versions 1902 and 1911, but I'm not able to narrow it down any more than that.  The 2 workarounds I came up with are:

1. Disable OneDrive's collaborative editing option.
2. Switch to back the "Broad" (semi-annual) channel and test.  As of today, this is Word version 1902 for me.  These instructions are good if you're testing on a single machine.

I found it easiest to test if it's a path length issue by creating files with a lot of spaces in the names.  The spaces get encoded into %20 when opening the collaborative editing URL, so a filename with 60-80 spaces should be enough to trip the limit.  For example, the file:

C:\Users\username\OneDrive - Company Name\-  .docx

...ends up being something like this:

<domainGUID>-my.sharepoint.com/personal/username_domainname_tld/Document/-%20%20.docx?web=1

That example may not look like a big difference, but, for us, we have some customers with long company names which usually means a long domain name and domainGUID.  For example, "Rumpelstiltskin's Gold Spinners Inc." could look like:

rumpelstiltskinsgoldspinners-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rumpelstiltskin_rumpelstiltskinsgoldspinners_com/Documents/

That uses 115 characters before anyone creates a directory structure or adds any files.  I've set up accounts where the company name ends up being set to initials (ex: RGS) to save a few characters on the unchangeable OneDrive directory name on local PCs.  This change makes collaborative editing unusable in those cases.

To me it feels like an unintended bug since, as you pointed out, it's possible to open the file by jumping through Word Online's "Open in Desktop Client" link.

Path length issues like this are the biggest problem we have with Office 365 / OneDrive.  They're almost impossible to explain to regular users.  Personally I'm kind of hoping this issue trickles into the semi-annual channel and breaks collaborative editing for a lot of people.  Maybe then the path length issue will get some attention.