Allow SELECTIVE Folder Selection BEFORE OneDrive Starts up
OneDrive drives me crazy. If the drive ever stops, or is quit, it wants to setup again. I point it to the folder I have already been using, and then a FULL sync wants to start where I only sync certain folders. When I go to preferences to change to a selective sync, the app tells me that a sync is in progress and I have to wait until all the files sync. I DON'T want to sync everything before I can change the settings. This happens repeatedly on any of my 4 Macs we use in our family. What a waste of time and BANDWIDTH! I have gotten up close to my quota several times when I have to restart OneDrive. I am about ready to stop using it altogether!
IdahoSAM
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16 comments
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Tim
commented
I have 800GB in my OneDrive. Since I am locating my OneDrive folders on an exFAT disk, the option for files-on-demand does not exist (files on demand only works on an AFPS disk). So I essentially have to download 800GB of OneDrive data before I can unselect a folder that contains 750GB that I did not intend to sync.
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Laurens Bot
commented
I think I found a workaround, after you have configured OneDrive pause sync and then change the permissions of the folder you want to exclude to read only (on your local Mac). Then you resume sync and you can then exclude it. After you exclude it the folder will be automatically deleted.
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Anonymous commented
I've 180GB+ of files. I want only 2 folders to sync on this PC. But I've to wait for hours before o can choose which folders I want to sync.
That makes no sense" It's essential we can choose the folders to be synched before the sync starts! -
Jaco Vermeulen
commented
I have the same issue. Not sure why MS expects requests to be generated here. The whole concept of of big cloud storage vs smaller and selective laptop storage goes out the window (sorry for pun) with this not working... MS, what are you thinking... Maybe let us know. Then we know if we need to wait for a fix, or find another product that works.
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M Shahzad
commented
I have the same issue, When I install one drive on my other iMac I don't want to sync all the folders to it but just couple but oneDrive is not allowing that, What it does it will sync everything before it allows to select the folders I want Sync. I think this waste of time, I have 1TB nearly full and it takes hours to sync everything and then select the folders I want. Developers please make the change, There should be an option to select which folders I want to sync before hand. Will save a lot of time and resources. Much Appreciate that.
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ivo kolev
commented
What a terrible product! Your product managers should be ashamed for approving this change. I've paid 2 year subscription and now it has gone to waste because I don't have space to sync my 1TB drive to my external drive.
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Feng Liang
commented
+ 100000!
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Luis Carlo
commented
Por Favor solucionen este problema, no puede uno con una conexión de datos limitada esperar a que a ustedes se les ocurra descargar todo mis archivos y con eso me acabe mi almacenamiento y mis datos. Tan sencillo seria tener múltiples opciones como elegir que folder sincronizar desde el proceso de configuración de la app.
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JasonFZ1
commented
This "feature" existed in all versions of OneDrive until very recently when OneDrive for Mac introdiced the "Files on Demand" feature. Files on Demand will download metadata but not the actual files hence saving disk space, which sounds great! The problem is that this feature requires that the OneDrive folder be located on a APFS formatted drive, so users that are using an OS that was updated from older macOS versions OR are using external or secondary drives are not always using APFS.
This mens that for users not able to use files on demand this change has in many cases made the software UNUSABLE. The reason is obvious. In the past, the user, prioro to the initial sync, could select which folders to sync. Now, the software will require a FULL SYNC from the cloud to the local drive before it lets the user select folders. This means that if the size of the cloud data exceed the available free space on the user drive the sync cannot continue, and even more stupidly the software doesn't check to see if the available space (let alone the size) of the disk has enough space. The software will try to download everything from the cloud until the entire disk space is full, which when on a system drive will start corrupting user OS'es. Even if there is free space, forcing the user to download a terabyte to then delete 90% of it is just plain dumb. MS recongizes the value of having some data in the cloud and less data on the local drive but has prohibited this use case for non-APFS volumes overnight, with no advance notice, by changing functionality that has no reason to have been changed. IE - waiting to sync until folders are selected will only take a few seconds, not relevant for the sync. It seems like MS forgot that non-APFS volume users might need to use the software. In its current form, it is not an "annoyance", in our case it is (since we have a lot of cloud data that exceeds disk space) unusable.
The simple ask is to just allow the user to select the sync folders BEFORE the initial sync starts, something that it did less than a month ago for every version of the software from day 1.
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Jor
commented
This is a huge problem. I have asked to solve the problem and Microsoft is asking me to write a request here... serious, is that is?! I am seriously doubting to go to another provider like Pcloud where they got things worked out.
If this was a bug from one version of the OS X app I wouldn’t be to fussy about it... but come on, this problem is there for a year! Not to mention that my onedrive app constantly freezes during the proces(fresh installation of Catalina on a 2020 MBP with 32gb of ram!). Shame on you Microsoft! Are you guys sleeping? It’s A while ago I have seen such a poor designed software for a company the size of Microsoft.
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Patrick Hansen
commented
in 2019, when you went to SharePoint and initiated sync, it used to prompt the OneDrive modal and prompt if to choose which folders to sync.
Now it just starts syncing and if you are connecting to a large directory, this pretty much paralyzes OneDrive and makes my machine sluggish while it is attempting to sync several GB's. -
Anonymous
commented
I hace over 500GB on my OneDrive, for my MacBook Air I want only a few folders to sync. I have to wait days before I can select the folders. Some of my OneDrive folders I don't want to sync have hundreds of thousands files! It is extremely frustrating.
Should be easy to ask the user which folders to sync BEFORE starting. -
BD
commented
This used to work according to https://support.office.com/en-us/article/sync-files-with-onedrive-on-mac-os-x-d11b9f29-00bb-4172-be39-997da46f913f. There was a selective setup screen there, and I had used it before.
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Rav
commented
Yup Same here. NEW Mac mini
Mac, up to date, Onedrive latest download from both app store and direct link from one drive website. When connecting the account it starts syncing the entire contents of one drive. When I try to deselect folders it says that the folders on my computer are not yet uploaded and to try again later. I have a video of this. 24 hours later I'm still having problems unselecting folders. -
Rebecca Johnson
commented
This has been the most frustrating thing I have had to deal with in my many years of using OneDrive. All you need to do is change one simple thing to STOP this headache!!! Also - this never used to be a problem for me until recently, so maybe this was removed in a software update??
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Petter
commented
I've seen this several times as well. This is so laughably bad. It might be that the settings are still there and suddenly gets picked up by the app, but it's really a hit and miss thing.
Syncing might be a semi-difficult problem, but having MS chops should really make it possible to solve.
