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...
thanks
I'm posting this here in case anyone else stumbles upon this answer and thinks symlinks/junctions is the solution.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Although you can make junction or symlinks between folders, OneDrive will not automatically sync them and the files/folders status indicator will (most of the time) stay in the 'to be synced' state, giving you the impression that its not been uploaded/synced when in reality it has. The only way to force a sync is to pause/un-pause the application, but the status indicators wont change so you still wont know if something has/has not been synced without checking it. Self defeating. Way to go......
It seems MS have half-hardheartedly removed this very useful and glaring missing functionality from the OneDrive application. It used to work with no issues at all, but instead of MS being up-front and obvious with a statement to say symlinks/junctions are not supported (and show this in the sync log), they've behind the scenes broken it so now we are left with files in disparate locations that we're just not sure are being synced any longer.
The only valid way to work with OneDrive is to copy the files into the OneDrive folder. If you want to backup data from other locations, sorry, but MS dont want you to. If they did, they would either a) make 'out of folder' synchronisation possible or b) allow symlinks/junctions to be used (as they used to work!)