Disastrous update of OneDrive coming for all macOS 12.3 users

[Bustycat]

After the release of macOS 12.2, OneDrive is updated to the latest standalone version (better experiences) on my two computers, even though one of them is still macOS 12.1 now.

Therefore Microsoft is so eager to persuade users to have the better experiences.

 

[gilby101]

Except I think it will make extra work or add confusion for people who started out pinning everything from the top level down, intending to tell OneDrive to preserve everything locally, but forget that new files/folders put into it after that won't default to getting pinned.

macOS 12.2 OneDrive 22.012.0116.001 (insider preview):

It is certainly confusing, but files inside a folder marked as "always keep on this device" are being kept on this device. And this applies to both files put into OneDrive locally and files put in remotely and then downloaded. The Finder interface does not always convey this correctly (bug presumably), but the files are on your Mac. More detail:

I asked for my OneDrive folder to be put on a newly created APFS volume, also called OneDrive. Previously all files and folders would be put in this directory. This is no longer true. The OneDrive folder has been replaced with an alias pointing to ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal. Whether I view that as ~/Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive or as /Volumes/OneDrive/OneDrive, I see this:

where it is all presented as the pseudo-volume OneDrive (with its cloud symbol).

The 4 files in Test folder which were loaded remotely (via the web interface) are all badged with the tick mark, but also with the cloud download badge. Very confusing and probably a bug. But files are not where they seem to be, they are here:

The whole OneDrive structure (with the real files) are in the hidden folder /.ODContainer-OneDrive on the drive where I asked them to be stored. And you can see that all files in Test have been downloaded (without me having to open them).

I am still curious about the Time Machine backup (from the NEW OneDrive location) and restore to a different folder.

Having discovered the stuff above (sorry you need to read it), I can look at my TM backups.

Please ignore the "OneDrive 1" is in an artefact of earlier testing.

You can see the OneDrive alias in the OneDrive volume - this being, an alias, points to the original location in ~Library which is not very useful. But the real files are in the .ODContainer-OneDrive folder. So this is where you will need to go to restore the files.

So, it seems that:
1) All pinned files are successfully downloaded, but not where you might expect without looking under the covers.
2) In some cases the pinned files have an erroneous cloud badge as well as the pinned badge.
3) All pinned files do get backed up by TimeMachine, but not where you would expect them.
4) You can recover pinned files from TM backup using Finder - but it is not obvious.
5) Users of other backup software need to be aware of where files are stored.

Is it easy to restore from TM backup - definitely not!

And it is very confusing/tangled.

 

[gilby101]

Therefore Microsoft is so eager to persuade users to have the better experiences.

It is, at least in part, Apple who is so eager for us to have a better experience with virtual/cloud drives. From posts elsewhere, Dropbox is needing to make equivalent changes before macOS 12.3.

 

[Bustycat]

So, it seems that:
1) All pinned files are successfully downloaded, but not where you might expect without looking under the covers.
2) In some cases the pinned files have an erroneous cloud badge as well as the pinned badge.
3) All pinned files do get backed up by TimeMachine, but not where you would expect them.
4) You can recover pinned files from TM backup using Finder - but it is not obvious.
5) Users of other backup software need to be aware of where files are stored.

From my experiences, the cloud ☁️ badge and the pinned ☑️ badge are separate concepts, managed by macOS and OneDrive respectively. When they are both shown to a file or folder, it means it will be kept on the device but it is currently unavailable. A user has to click on the cloud badge to make the file or folder available, or open the file.

 

[gilby101]

From my experiences, the cloud ☁️ badge and the pinned ☑️ badge are separate concepts, managed by macOS and OneDrive respectively. When they are both shown to a file or folder, it means it will be kept on the device but it is currently unavailable. A user has to click on the cloud badge to make the file or folder available, or open the file.

Ok. that's a logical explanation. But for these double badged files, they have already been downloaded (they are in the hidden .ODContainer-OneDrive folder) just not opened or made fully visible to the One Drive pseudo drive. Just another bit of confusion.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

Just upgraded to Monterey 12.2

Complete Dogs-dinner for OneDrive. About the only good thing is that it continues to Sync. For now.

It disappeared from the Applications folder for a while, presumably while it was doing a silent upgrade.

Whilst others say it disappears, I still have the 'old' dialog box where I could if I wished activate Files on Demand. Its been set off forever and I don't want it on.

When I start OneDrive it tells me can't upgrade the experience, my files are on an unsupported file system and it can't upgrade that to APFS. Sort of true, the folders are on an HFS+ partition on an HDD with several other partitions, not an SDD. IMHO anyone who thinks HDD's should be format as AFPS should consider a trip to their analyst.

There's no way I will have the only copy of a file on a someones server, Microsoft in particular. I spent the better part of six months a few years ago repeatedly showing them that off you changed a keyword embedded in a jpg then it's servers created a new version that both lost the change and degraded the colourspace from Prophoto to the lowest possible version of RGB, and then downloaded the file back onto your machine as that was now out of date.

Time to upgrade my own experience by relearning how to use the web interface and deleting the app.

 

[Wando64]

Ultimately every syncing storage service will follow the wrong path for macOS.

As explained on my reply to you on the MS blog, I think this is very unlikely and probably just incorrect.

Apple iCloud allows for all files to be stored locally by deselecting the “optimise Mac storage” option.
I know that Dropbox are having some minor problems with 12.3 but I have not heard of any plan to force Smart Sync on users.

Apple might well have changed the way file synchronisation works, but they are not mandating Files On Demand functionality.
OneDrive could have made their “new experience” much better simply by pinning all files by default, until and unless the user actively decides to unpin them.
In other words, until the user decides to use Files On Demand.

The backlash they are currently experiencing might well force them to do just that in a future version.

 

[bikrrr]

The problem I have with the forced "files on demand" mode is that it doesn't support document packages, even for files set to Always Keep on This Device.

Before this update, I could right-click a package and choose Show Package Contents like this:

But with this update, that option is missing.

 

[durhambullsfan]

I just tested this. Opened a file on my OneDrive from the finder and autosave was on for both an Excel file and a Word file. I am updated to the latest OneDrive as well as the other Office apps.

I did notice that for older excel files (.xls) the autosave was not on, but for new versions (.xlsx) it was on.

Hmm, interesting. I'll keep experimenting. Hopefully I can get it to start working!

 

[durhambullsfan]

I set my base OneDrive directory to "always keep on this device." Yet I'm still finding that subfolders aren't downloading their contents until I manually open the folder. This is mainly a problem because I want to be able to find things using Spotlight/Alfred. Is there any way to force OneDrive to at least download the whole file directory so Spotlight knows where everything is?

 

[danielgrieff]

As explained on my reply to you on the MS blog, I think this is very unlikely and probably just incorrect.

Apple iCloud allows for all files to be stored locally by deselecting the “optimise Mac storage” option.
I know that Dropbox are having some minor problems with 12.3 but I have not heard of any plan to force Smart Sync on users.

Apple might well have changed the way file synchronisation works, but they are not mandating Files On Demand functionality.
OneDrive could have made their “new experience” much better simply by pinning all files by default, until and unless the user actively decides to unpin them.
In other words, until the user decides to use Files On Demand.

The backlash they are currently experiencing might well force them to do just that in a future version.

Also, does dropbox allow users to keep their files in a location apart from the home folder?

Basically everyone that stores their files on an external storage media is worse off, with this feature.

 

[kingtj1971]

Also, does dropbox allow users to keep their files in a location apart from the home folder?

Basically everyone that stores their files on an external storage media is worse off, with this feature.

My experience w/DropBox is that no, you can specify any location you like for its "home" folder (in one of its configuration tabs), but everything it does has to stay underneath that folder.

I don't recall having any issues backing up the contents of that DropBox "home" folder though? Worst case is you'd just stop the DropBox service from syncing before starting the backup so nothing is "locked" or getting backed up partially or with "temp" files or what-not.

 

[ursamaior]

My Onedrive folder was on an external drive.
Now, on my external drive, I have an alias folder "OneDrive" that points on Library/cloudstorage on my internal drive.
I pinned all the files but seems that, in this case, my files are downloaded on my internal drives because I see my free space is reduced.
How is it possible if they wrote: «Because the cache path is located on an external drive in this scenario, any pinned content will be stored there and not on the main drive»

 

[gilby101]

My Onedrive folder was on an external drive.
Now, on my external drive, I have an alias folder "OneDrive" that points on Library/cloudstorage on my internal drive.

Mine is like that. The real pinned files are stored in the hidden folder .ODContainer-OneDrive on the external drive.

EDIT: But unpinned files do seem to go into ~/Library/CloudStorage.

 

[gilby101]

I set my base OneDrive directory to "always keep on this device." Yet I'm still finding that subfolders aren't downloading their contents until I manually open the folder. This is mainly a problem because I want to be able to find things using Spotlight/Alfred. Is there any way to force OneDrive to at least download the whole file directory so Spotlight knows where everything is?

Spotlight indexing seems very weird. I don't really understand how it is working. What seems to happen with my OneDrive which is on an external drive:

Firstly, the pinned subfolder downloading (or not): The content of all pinned folders is downloading to the hidden folder .ODContainer-OneDrive. Go and look - it is there.

The .ODContainer-OneDrive folder does not seem to be indexed by Spotlight.

When you actually try to use (from the OneDrive pseudo disk) one of these pinned files, it appears fully (quicklook works) only after opening the file on the OneDrive pseudo disk which is really in ~/Library/CloudStorage. This doesn't involve any download.

As a consequence (I don't know how) it gets indexed (content and metadata) by Spotlight with search results giving the location as the pseudo disk.

No doubt this is all part of the magic that Apple is providing to OneDrive. But I have not found a way to force the already downloaded files to fully appear in the pseudo-folder and so be indexed by Spotlight.

 

[am2am]

This is serious.
MS decides to remove users files from their PC without consent nor proper information.
I can accept new way of files storage/syncing (even thou it probably destroys some existing workflows) but cannot accept MS deleting my files on my machine!

On top of this I expect errors (few have already reported their nightmares)

I am wondering how MS is planning to deal with corp/enterprise clients with hundreds/thousands of users relying on proven/working workflows broken suddenly.

I removed autoupdates from all my Macs and will see how it evolves. I do not plan to upgrade anything for the next few weeks a minimum until early bugs are sorted and it is consider stable. My only concern - some have reported their onedrive being updated despite auto-updates disabled..

 

[gilby101]

3) All pinned files do get backed up by TimeMachine, but not where you would expect them.
4) You can recover pinned files from TM backup using Finder - but it is not obvious.
5) Users of other backup software need to be aware of where files are stored.

The backup situation is more ugly than that.

All files, both pinned and unpinned are in .ODContainer-OneDrive hidden folder And all files are listed as having their full size - even the cloud only that take zero size on disk.

What backup software (I have tried with Time Machine and with Arq) does is to backup everything (pinned and unpinned) with the backup of each file listed as having their full size, though the cloud only files take zero space in the backup location.

So when attempting to recover you need to look very carefully at which files actually have content (non-zero on disk size) and which do not.

With Time Machine (via Finder) you can see both the file size and size on disk of each file using Get Info. That will be very messy until you can trust that whole pinned folders are truly downloaded - you can check this via Get Info on the folder which should show folder size being the same as the "on disk" size.

With Arq you can only see the full size of each file folder, so can't tell if it is really in the backup until you attempt a restore and inspect the restored files. Other backup software may be similar.

 

[bikrrr]

Just found another side effect of this OneDrive update, deleting files from a OneDrive location skips the Trash can. It does warn you:

But you can't undo by pressing Cmd+Z or restore from the Mac's Trash can. You have to go to OneDrive on the web, which has its own Recycle bin. This makes managing files in the OneDrive folder that much more annoying.

 

[kwehner]

Sorry for asking again, but does anyone understand the implications on backing up data locally?
Currently my OneDrive folder is backed up to Time Machine and via CCC, like any other folders (because that's just what it is).

After the transition to the new system there will be a Sync Root and a Cache Path, possibly on different drives.
What does this mean on the ability to create local backups that can be read and used with or without the need for OneDrive installed on the restore machine?
Thanks

I initially had issues backing up my OneDrive folder with CCC, but after deleting the CloudStorage folder on my backup volume, it's worked without a hitch.

 

[kwehner]

Just found another side effect of this OneDrive update, deleting files from a OneDrive location skips the Trash can. It does warn you:

View attachment 1950499

But you can't undo by pressing Cmd+Z or restore from the Mac's Trash can. You have to go to OneDrive on the web, which has its own Recycle bin. This makes managing files in the OneDrive folder that much more annoying.

I found that if I delete files from the "hidden" cache folder /Users/user_name/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OneDriveStandaloneSuite/OneDrive.noindex/OneDrive, they do go to my Mac's Trash and the corresponding "clone" file in ~Library/CloudStorage/OneDrive-Personal is simultaneously deleted.

 

[durhambullsfan]

I just tested this. Opened a file on my OneDrive from the finder and autosave was on for both an Excel file and a Word file. I am updated to the latest OneDrive as well as the other Office apps.

I did notice that for older excel files (.xls) the autosave was not on, but for new versions (.xlsx) it was on.

Can anyone else replicate that AutoSave from Finder works? Trying to figure out if it's just something about my configuration, but Autosave doesn't work now on all 3 of my machines.

 

[Aggedor]

On Ars Technica today.

 

[Huey_Pilot]

Just found another side effect of this OneDrive update, deleting files from a OneDrive location skips the Trash can. It does warn you:

View attachment 1950499

But you can't undo by pressing Cmd+Z or restore from the Mac's Trash can. You have to go to OneDrive on the web, which has its own Recycle bin. This makes managing files in the OneDrive folder that much more annoying.

Maybe think twice before deleting your file?

 

[Huey_Pilot]

Can anyone else replicate that AutoSave from Finder works? Trying to figure out if it's just something about my configuration, but Autosave doesn't work now on all 3 of my machines.

Autosave is working for me.

 

[Wando64]

Maybe think twice before deleting your file?

Is this meant to be a joke?