MS OneDrive on macOS - reliably unreliable?!

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mac98aop

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Jan 14, 2021, 4:22:39 AM1/14/21
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Morning all

Our small team uses Office 365 so it 'seemed' like a good idea to start using OneDrive and SharePoint instead of Google Drive (GDrive is reliable, but has some annoyances and we're not wild about the privacy side of things).

Anyhoo, we're finding the OneDrive Sync to be horribly unreliable on macOS. It regularly signs out, refuses to sign in using the same sync folders, has to be unistalled, reinstalled, and resign in and download all folders again.

(We're on Big Sur.)
Anybody got any tips or better experience? If not, we might just go elsewhere.

Thanks v much and hope all are safe and well,

Adam

Tony Crooks

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Jan 14, 2021, 4:33:33 AM1/14/21
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I’ve read this is a known problem on Big Sur - something of concern for businesses that operate a BYOD policy. You’d need to check a Windows forum that has OneDrive threads for workarounds. I believe that MS is working on new universal version of the app for macOS

Jason P. Davies

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Jan 14, 2021, 4:44:29 AM1/14/21
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I’ve found exactly what’s described on Mojave FWIW. I wouldn’t expect a fix any time soon! But I found it was particular folders being synced that set this off. When I removed it, it seemed to behave. If it’s critical, try removing all sync folders and only adding them back one at a time.



Thanks,

-Jason
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mac98aop

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Jan 14, 2021, 9:53:34 AM1/14/21
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Thanks, both. Very helpful. I'll try the folder by folder sync and see how we go. One of the problems seems to be that we also use SharePoint sync, and OneDrive syncs both through the same app. Fine in principle, but I dare to suggest it just gets confused as to what's my OneDrive, what's SharePoint, and loses all directory mapping for no reason.

Will see if the trillion dollar MS can fix these niggles ;)

Jason Davies

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Jan 14, 2021, 12:04:42 PM1/14/21
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Our IT people always shrug these off as 'X is just a way to reach Sharepoint' (where X can be Teams or any other MS product) so maybe try cutting Onedrive out of the equation to see if that works then (as ever) adding in one new thing at a time such as Onedrive.

It's always the way with Apple vs MS, it seems. Apple make something work a bit too slickly, and MS make it like going over a cattlegrid...

Good luck.
J

Stephen Watson

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Jan 14, 2021, 7:04:48 PM1/14/21
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I was one of the SharePoint bods at my last job and we would steer people from SharePoint sync if we could - it’s only needed if you must have offline access to your documents and it caused no end of issues shortly after I joined in 2018. I believe MS improved it quite dramatically about 6 months later but it wasn’t something we ever used much. This was all done on Windows and whilst I used SharePoint and OneDrive at home on my MacBook it was done on Catalina.

OneDrive is stored in SharePoint as you will see if you look at its URL which I think begins my.sharepoint

I found the OneDrive app to be reliable and straightforward on Catalina, but I’ve never tried on Big Sur. It has a web interface via MS 365 which works pretty well most of the time.

Stephen

You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. ~ Carl Jung

On 14 Jan 2021, at 14:53, mac98aop <adamp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, both. Very helpful. I'll try the folder by folder sync and see how we go. One of the problems seems to be that we also use SharePoint sync, and OneDrive syncs both through the same app. Fine in principle, but I dare to suggest it just gets confused as to what's my OneDrive, what's SharePoint, and loses all directory mapping for no reason.

mac98aop

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Jan 15, 2021, 3:11:12 AM1/15/21
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Thanks for this.

I'm interested by what you say, Stephen and Jason, as I'm wondering if our setup is wrong or complicated.

We have it that each team member has their own OneDrive and we all then access the team SharePoint. That confused us at first, as we were used to GDrive where we all accessed one GDrive but with restrictions on who accessed which folders etc.

Now, we each have all our own files on our own separate OneDrives. But for those folders and files that require shared access, they're stored and accessed separately on the organisations SharePoint. It's a pain and quite unintuitive. Is there a better way?!

Regardless, sounds like SP sync needs turning off. That's a shame, as it's less about offline access but daily workflow, eg. saving an attachment from Mail to a SharePoint folder should be easy enough. Now, it seems best to save to desktop and drag and drop to SharPoint online via browser. 

Any tips?!

Jason Davies

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Jan 15, 2021, 8:19:15 AM1/15/21
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you've now reminded me of a time when a colleague had a shared folder on OneDrive and it decided to delete it one day. Both swore they had literally not opened the folder around the time it happened. Luckily, one of them had listened to one of my regular lectures about backing up and Time Machine had made a copy.

Though my work is now very Teams- and Sharepoint- based, I have got over my rage at having to drop things into a browser one at a time (folders? ha!) because otherwise something goes wrong. It's a total disgrace imo - I had better than this via ftp sync in about 1997 over dial-up. tbh my advice is don't spend time trying to make it work, just bite the bullet that everything has to be done by hand. It IS that bad. I have also spent time with one of those people who enthuse about Sharepoint and am firmly of the opinion as a result that it works when it's your complete lifestyle and you're the one in charge of it all. It's like talking to a librarian who says their system of putting books on shelves by height and colour makes it much easier to put them back (not that any real librarian would do that).

In other words, give up (sorry). It's all a horrible badly-designed system full of patches and workarounds.

(My latest headache is that people share a file, not by attachment, but via some crappy Sharepoint link. I seem to do nothing except close useless intermediate webpages for Teams meetings and Sharepoint files.) It's deliberate empire-building by MS, and when they create a new unified browser-based system we will look back on what wehave now nostalgically.

(I'm not as angry as I sound, I promise! But I've been trying to make it work for years, and it's less stress to keep it very simple).

Cheers,
J

Stephen Watson

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Jan 15, 2021, 8:43:52 AM1/15/21
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Our principle was, everything was stored in SharePoint and only the documents that the company wouldn’t mind losing if you were run over were kept in OneDrive as it’s personal to you and pretty much inaccessible to anyone else unless you share stuff from it. This worked well for us.

However, to make SP work comfortably and well, you pretty much only want to be storing MS Office documents in it - just right click to open online or in the full app. It doesn’t play well with anything else - it won’t even open PDFs in any native app!

I can’t remember how it worked on my Mac but in Office apps on Windows you could save directly to SharePoint, but otherwise, yes, best to drag to desktop then drop into SP.

The thing to remember about SP is that it’s all in a browser. Keep tabs open in your browser for each library you wish to access/upload to and even another for your OneDrive if there’s any advantage to be had. DO NOT drag docs from the browser version of OneDrive into SP though as you will just create a link high will be of not use to most SP users.

Other SP tips, if you have the control - use views and groups and don’t use folders. SP plays curiously with them and we used Views and groups for over 200,000 documents.

Our office found SP worked very well and I liked it personally... if you are using MS office documents 😉 

Stephen

You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. ~ Carl Jung

On 15 Jan 2021, at 08:11, mac98aop <adamp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for this.

mac98aop

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Jan 15, 2021, 10:23:41 AM1/15/21
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Golly, thanks for such detailed and helpful replies. A really useful thread. If nothing else, I'm reassured I'm not going mad, and it makes sense why non Office files were constantly misbehaving (I don't expect Office to open my Mindnode app, but yes, to play more nice with PDFs!)

I'll file this. I'm basically chief cook and bottle washer here (I'm a pastor) and so everybody else is a volunteer. When lockdown lifts, we'll all sit round a table and plan what we need, and then where to store. Sounds like Users and Groups are the way ahead. Interestingly, (foolishly?!) we migrated to OneDrive/SharePoint on recommendation of good techie friend, who is effectively our librarian - ie, he's a team of one running freelance web design so little wonder it works nicely for him - he only has to share it with himself!

Anyway, all told I quite like the UI and concepts and feel happier here than with GDrive, never liked DropBox and won't inflict iCloud on my non-Apple enthusiastic compadres!

Thanks again and have a super weekend,

Adam

Stephen Watson

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Jan 15, 2021, 2:04:59 PM1/15/21
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Hmmm.

Sounds like a possibly messed up SharePoint setup - Staff regularly uploaded dozens of files at a time without trouble. I did however have to move about 1,200 documents from one library to another and found that if I chose more than 80 to move at once it all went horribly wrong...

Also, we made it company policy to end using email attachments (which is what everyone did until then) and changed them to sharing links from SP, both internally where required and for external contractors and 95% of the time it was no trouble at all.

It’s my only experience of SP, yours sounds rather different. 😞 

Anyway - that’s quite enough non Apple stuff from me! 😝

Stephen

You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. ~ Carl Jung

On 15 Jan 2021, at 13:19, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group <sm...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Stephen Watson

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Jan 15, 2021, 5:23:18 PM1/15/21
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Users and groups are what you need - we managed 240 users like that!

If you need any help Post Lockdown, feel free to drop me a line if I can be of any help will gladly offer it.

Stephen

Happy weekend!


You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. ~ Carl Jung

On 15 Jan 2021, at 15:23, mac98aop <adamp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Golly, thanks for such detailed and helpful replies. A really useful thread. If nothing else, I'm reassured I'm not going mad, and it makes sense why non Office files were constantly misbehaving (I don't expect Office to open my Mindnode app, but yes, to play more nice with PDFs!)

Jason Davies

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Jan 17, 2021, 9:25:09 AM1/17/21
to 'Stephen Watson' via Sussex Mac User Group
On 15 Jan 2021, at 22:23, 'Stephen Watson' via Sussex Mac User Group
wrote:

> Users and groups are what you need - we managed 240 users like that!

Like most things, you need enough people who know what they're doing and
what 'best practice' is. Suddenly rolling out a new format that breaks
existing workflows (eg I have extremely efficient ways of handling
attachments that I need to do things with, which doesn't understand
Sharepoint) is not the way. In addition, MS software is very
mouse-intensive (most people don't notice this) and I get RSI. Adding
extra layers of dragging and dropping etc literally hurts me;)

If you ever need to move large/many files between people on different
platforms and keep them co-ordinated, I have used Resilio Sync with
quite a few non-techy people successfully. It's like dropbox without the
cloud (or the limits), and with the same danger that if one person makes
a change, it affects everyone. It does have read-only settings though so
if people don't need to be able to edit, but just to copy from/read
files, that's pretty secure. (I think I sent someone here a multi-gig OS
installer that way and it worked, yay).

As ever the advice has to end with don't forget a robust back-up system
like Time Machine that you have good control over! All systems get
glitches...

Cheers,

Jason
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