Forum Discussion
Windows One Drive shared folder suddenly become shortcut instead of folders
Hi, I am having an issue that I need help with. I have my One Drive account for several years. I have my main account signed in on my laptop. I have 4 other users sharing their folder with edit a...
Ok Guys, after 3 months, I've found a solution!
the problem comes from the account itself. So you need to create another account (in our case we used the email address removed for privacy reasons from our company). Log off the previous user and log in with the new one. Then go to the main account you can share again the folders you need with this new user. On the new user profile (online) you click on the "add a shortucut to this folder to my files" and magic, it will create a regular folder in windows explorer like before.
In our case only one computer out of 3 was affected by that, but since yesterday everything works pefectly fine now!!!
Microsoft are aware of the problem and "are working on it"... 3 months with nothing, really poor customer service.
But at least we can work again with one drive normaly
Good luck.
the problem comes from the account itself. So you need to create another account (in our case we used the email address removed for privacy reasons from our company). Log off the previous user and log in with the new one. Then go to the main account you can share again the folders you need with this new user. On the new user profile (online) you click on the "add a shortucut to this folder to my files" and magic, it will create a regular folder in windows explorer like before.
In our case only one computer out of 3 was affected by that, but since yesterday everything works pefectly fine now!!!
Microsoft are aware of the problem and "are working on it"... 3 months with nothing, really poor customer service.
But at least we can work again with one drive normaly
Good luck.
Do I create another account with OneDrive and pay another fee, or add another user onto the account I currently have already?
I'm not sure that works for a personal user though - I don't think we can create additional users under a personal account.
Hi! I wrote a long reply to your post which doesn't seem to have been saved (but if it turns up, ignore the following!).
I have exactly the same problem which only appeared this week. I am trying to follow your workaround but I'm struggling to follow some of the steps. Can you help?
Let's suppose that I am User 1 and User X has shared a OneDrive folder with me. It shows up in my online account, I click to add to MyFiles but it only appears as a shortcut in File Explorer. Now let's turn to your workaround. I should log out of User 1 and create another account (User 2) and log into that online. Then do I share User X's folder from User 1 to User 2 (and is that possible)? Assuming that works, wouldn't I need to remain logged in as User 2 in order to access it fully? I still need access to the normal User 1 folders in order to continue to work. Does this make any sense, and if so can you help? Thank you!
Hello,
We've had the problem again this week. We did our fix again today and it does work.
So let's recap Following your logic:
"I should log out of User 1 and create another account (User 2) and log into that online" Correct
You also have to log in as User 2 on your computer, on the bottom right, where you have the cloud.
Then User X shars the folder to user 2.
when logged in as User 2, click on "add a shortucut to this folder to my files". and Voila!
"Assuming that works, wouldn't I need to remain logged in as User 2 in order to access it fully?" YES
"I still need access to the normal User 1 folders in order to continue to work" then you can just share all the content you need from User 1 to User 2. That will allow you to work normaly.
Hope this helps, good luck!
I am having the same problem and would like to try your workaround but I can't entirely follow it. Let's call my current account User 1. Someone else (User X) is sharing a folder with me which currently only appears as a shortcut, rather than a fully accessible folder in File Explorer. I follow that you have to log out from your original (User 1) account, create a new one (User 2) and log in online with that account, then 'add shortcut etc' (as above). What do you do from there? User 2 will have no folders - does (and can?) User 1 share the User X shared folder with User 2? But then you will have to remain logged in as User 2 when accessing the shared contents, whereas I need to use the shared contents when I am User 1. Help! Does this make any sense?! Thank you!
Until today, no fix from microsoft. I'll try solution, hope it will work.
Otherwise we'll use other cloud services that able to do it
Thanks for sharing
Hello Everyone,
We've had the problem a few month ago. Microsoft never replied and never fixed anything... so do not wait on that and do not waist time trying to call them...
The only "solution" we've found and that works for us is to create a new email adress. that allows you to use onedrive normally. we've replaced the email with the problem by our generic email. This had worked perfectly fine for us up to now...
I've had a serious look at alternative solutions like google and private servers, but the issue is that only onedrive allows multiples user to modify a ppt or a spreadsheet a the same time which we are doing on a daily basis...
Good luck !
Yep, we did that early on but the shortcut became an 'internet shortcut' which then takes the affected user to web version of the Onedrive folder rather than the file explorer version. The work around that we have adopted is that the affected user then has to 'Open in App' to get full functionality from files contained in the affected folder.
It is baffles me why it has only affected one file for one of the many users of the affected shared folder.
