Feb 01 2022 12:04 PM - edited Feb 24 2022 10:21 AM
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
Feb 01 2022 12:46 PM - edited Feb 01 2022 12:47 PM
One issue I found is that when I open files from Finder, Auto Save doesn't works, and the Share button asks to upload the file to OneDrive. It opens like a file outside the OneDrive folder. But if I open the file from Word, Excel or PowerPoint, it opens with Auto Save and the Share button works as expected. Looking forward to an update fixing this issue.
Thanks,
DV
Feb 01 2022 12:48 PM - edited Feb 01 2022 01:07 PM
Thanks for sharing. We are aware of an issue that we are going to fix asap related to AutoSave if you have OneDrive installed from the App Store. Is that the case for you? Can you share by DM your OneDrive Device ID and date of when you tried to open from Finder so we can take a look at the logs to confirm if it's the same issue or a different one?
Feb 01 2022 01:47 PM
Okay, so since we have to manually download everything in our bright new shiny non-automated world:
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.
Feb 01 2022 02:27 PM
Feb 01 2022 02:45 PM
Feb 01 2022 09:35 PM
Feb 01 2022 09:37 PM
Feb 02 2022 03:49 AM
Feb 02 2022 04:57 AM
Thank you for the openness on this article https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experi...
The 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.
Feb 02 2022 05:34 AM
Feb 02 2022 08:51 AM
Why does the "new and improved" OneDrive client refuse to download files even after you select "Always Keep on this Device?" On my M1 MacMini, I've been able to force this to work, although it took several days. On my Intel MacBook Pro, however, it simply will not download folders or files unless you click on each and every file, one by one by one...
It simply doesn't work consistently or sometimes at all. This is a complete failure, I still can't believe it. @Ankita Kirti
Feb 02 2022 09:15 AM
The cloud icon staying there always is confusing and seems to be a bug :
Why are all my files redownloading with this update? Why are my always-available files displaying a "not downloaded" icon?
Let me first set you at ease: your files aren't actually redownloading. What you are seeing is a bit of an optical illusion.
When your OneDrive instance is upgraded to the new Files On-Demand, macOS creates a new folder for your OneDrive files and we move your old folder into our cache location. We do it this way for many reasons, but two of the most important are that we can preserve your settings around which files are always available, and we can prevent the sync client from performing a costly reindex of all of your content.
As your files are brought into our cache, we tell the macOS File Provider platform about them. That causes the operating system to create the files in the new OneDrive folder that you will actually use. As part of telling the File Provider platform about your files, we include metadata about them, so that the operating system knows how big they are, what icons to show, and so forth.
Unfortunately, the current implementation of File Provider does not allow us to tell the operating system that we already have the file's contents available – so they appear to be online-only, even though their contents are safe in our cache, ready for the first time you access them. The best that we can do is tell the system to show the always available icon (the checkmark), but we can't tell the system to hide the "not downloaded" icon. The "not downloaded" icon is shown automatically by the File Provider system when the file is dataless in the sync root, and there's no current way for OneDrive to override this. Please know that we are actively investigating ways to address this, as we understand that it is a top source (if not the top source) of user confusion with this update.
The key thing to remember here is that if you double-click the files that we already have in our cache (files that you pinned when you selected “Always Keep On This Device” and anything you had downloaded before we did the upgrade), they will be retrieved and opened as expected, without any network traffic. This will work even if OneDrive isn't running, is paused, and so forth.
Feb 02 2022 09:30 AM
Feb 02 2022 09:37 AM
Feb 02 2022 09:47 AM
I've pinned most of my files. If I understand you correctly, they are now in the sync root and in the cache path as well, but only taking up space once as they are clones. So far so good. But now I noticed that Time Machine backs up the files in both locations as distinct files, i.e. not as clones, using up twice as much space as before. I could exclude one location from backing up but I'm not sure which one. If I had to do a complete reinstall of MacOS and using my Time Machine backup to bring back my files (instead of downloading 300gb from OneDrive), would it be better to have them in the sync root or in the cache path?
Feb 02 2022 10:10 AM
Feb 02 2022 10:12 AM
@Michael_Dufranne: I read what you are saying but I am also telling you (and so are many others) that it does not describe what is actually happening. The files are not on my device, even after requesting that they be kept on. They are not indexed by spotlight, because I've checked. They are not captured by other spotlight-dependent applications, like Alfred. If I open them, they download, but if I edit them, I invariably get an error in the program they are opened in (for example, a pdf in Preview or a doc in Word) that the file has been changed by an external application and has to be reloaded. Then, when it's reloaded, all previous changes are gone. It's maddening.
Feb 02 2022 10:15 AM
Feb 02 2022 10:37 AM