Sync external OneDrive shared folders

[Antoine HESKIA]

Hi,

I have shared a folder from my OneDrive (for business) to an external user (external organization). He has also an O365 E3 subscription. When he click on the invitation email, he sees correctly the content of my folder and can edit any document. But on the toolbar there is no "sync" button to let him synchronize my folder on his computer. How can I enable this feature ?

Thanks for your help,

Antoine

[#2 · Accepted solution]

You cannot sync folders shared from a user belonging to another organization.

[#3]

Wow... This is crazy ! We did that for years with Dropbox. Are you aware to any plan regarding adding this feature ?

In the meantime, I guess I have to create a O365 group (or a MS Teams) to use SharePoint sync (with Groove for external organization).

Thanks,

Antoine.

[#4]

If I remember well, the ability to sync shared folders is coming but no ETA yet.... adding @Stephen Rice and @Stephen Rose to the thread

[#5]

Hi all,

Yep, pretty much what Juan said. We've got this feature on the roadmap but don't have any specific timeline to share just yet. Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#6]

Thanks for sharing this !

[#7]

I tried to share a sharepoint library with a b2b user. The user cannot configure the sync in the onedrive client, because he cannot add the account.
Will this be addressed as well? Still no ETA i guess?

Thanks

[#8]

Agreed, crazy! 

And to make it worse, this little tidbit is nowhere to be found in OneDrive Admin, O365 Admin, or any of the pages describing how to share to external users. 

[#9]

Oh, pretty please, make this happen, OneDrive/SharePoint team!

I've grown so accustomed to the new document sync that I can't really function otherwise. And yet now we have a client who requires us to keep all work in their SharePoint document library that they've shared with us... except I can't sync that to my PC, so there's no way I can work on it directly and will have to keep a copy locally and upload periodically.

The funny thing is I can see the "Sync" button in the document library, except the sync client won't let me finish the setup.

[#10]

The sync button being there and "attempting to start the process" is the worst part. It allows customers/users to believe that it should work while blatantly it's not a completed feature.

[#11]

Yes, something that I would really LIKE!

[#12]

After a few hours of testing, and 45 minutes of MS support call time, I can confirm again that there is no way for external personal account guests to sync a Teams Sharepoint folder in the OneDrive app. I also do not see any sign of this option on the OneDrive roadmap?  https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=sharepoint%2Cmicrosoft%20teams...

This is an interesting issue since it starts in Teams, goes to Sharepoint, and then OneDrive - which dev team is responsible? Or can there be a sync option directly from Teams?

[#13]

This is really going more & more difficult to sync external libraries...

First we had to re-enable groove by adding the registry key to prevent uninstall of the "OneDrive for business" (aka groove) when installing the click2run version of Office (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/changes-to-the-previous-onedrive-sync-client-groove-exe-in-... )

We can still copy/paste the URL of the SharePoint library we need to sync, but most of the time, the sync start to fail and there is no way to fix it other than stopping the library sync, deleting the synced file on the compuer, restart the Library sync...

Anyway when it comes to SharePoint libraries created with Teams (Office365 Groups), the groove sync seems not to be possible !

This is really messy ! When everything will be available with the new client ?

[#14]

Great Antoine that you keep this issue fresh.  We are preparing to open a DropBox for Business account to support a few specific teams that must allow offline file sync with external team members. Obviously not our preferred solution, but we also do not want to get into the business of creating new Office 365 user accounts for every external user - they could add-up to more licences than our own employees!

[#15]

Hi Ian,

Be careful with Dropbox fur business. We were using it before. As far as I remember, If you share files with external people, they will be limited to 2GB storage (otherwise they will have to pay Dropbox for extra storage)...

[#16]

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@Antoine HESKIA wrote:

Hi Ian,

Be careful with Dropbox fur business. We were using it before. As far as I remember, If you share files with external people, they will be limited to 2GB storage (otherwise they will have to pay Dropbox for extra storage)...

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Exactly.  DropBox is no magic bullet, so I am hoping this message gets out as well :)

[#17]

Hi,

Is there an ETA on this feature yet?

[#18]

Hi @Mark Elliott,

Nothing specific to share just yet. Stay tuned though!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#19]

It is really frustrating that OneDrive still diesn’t offers this feature in 2018 where the majority has such a functionality since years. Please give this request a much higher priority

[#20]

Hi @Klaus Kresnik,

The team is absolutely focused on this and we're very excited to get this into your hands. Definitely keep an eye on message center and our OneDrive blogs for more information in the future!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II