I’m Switching from ‘Sync’ to ‘Add shortcut to OneDrive’ – and Why
One of the downsides of being immersed in the Microsoft 365 platform is I develop habits based on how the platform worked historically. One of these is my choice to use Sync with Document Libraries exclusively, instead of Add shortcut to OneDrive. (Note that the language on this “button” has changed over time, but as of the writing of this post says Add shortcut to OneDrive).
Today my fellow Sympraxian shared this great article from Hans Brender (@HansBrender): Add to OneDrive (tekkigurus.com). As I read through the article – it’s very detailed – I decided I’ve been holding things wrong. Hans knows OneDrive better than just about anybody – he’s Mr. OneDrive!
What I’ve told clients in the past is to pick one or the other and only use that choice. It’s a personal decision, rather than an organizational decision. The reason to pick one or the other and be consistent about it is that you can’t use both methods with any single Document Library.
BUT, Hans points out several limitations with the “classic Sync“. (Classic, modern, neo-classic-modern… we run out of words!)
- There is a limit of 300,000 total files synced (the count, not the size)
- The sync points you set up on one device aren’t applied to your other devices. (This may also seem like a benefit, if you do different types of work with your different devices.)
- Stopping a sync is a somewhat obtuse process, so many people simply never stop syncing things.
On the other hand, there are some upsides for Add shortcut to OneDrive.
- If the org wants to push shortcuts out, then people should use Add shortcut to OneDrive (as noted, the text has changed since Hans’ article).
- You can rearrange the shortcuts if you choose to provide something more intuitive for yourself.
Like I said above, I’ve always used Sync. But after reading the article, I’m feeling I need to change my habit. I’ve had a feeling for a while now that Microsoft – in its infinite wisdom and having the goal to help everyone – might decide to deprecate Sync. I have no knowledge of this actually happening, but I have a feeling.
If you are like me and you work in multiple tenants, you may choose one or other of the two approaches for different reasons. But from now on I’m going to use the Add shortcut to OneDrive option. Plus, I’m going to go through the effort of moving from classic Sync to Add shortcut to OneDrive – as soon as I hang up here.
Hans’ article does a MUCH better job of explaining all this, and in great detail, so I chose to only hit the high points. I strongly recommend reading his article to get all the details.
Hi Marc,
interesting article. Thanks for pointing to Hans’ blog. In my practice, I have always discouraged clients from syncing SharePoint libraries or folders to their local device. I’m a big fan of working with files in their original location, for a lot of reasons. Sync creates traffic. If 1000 people in an office all sync the same SharePoint libraries, the content is getting constantly synced across 1000 (or more) devices as they all work with their files. In Excel, references to a locally synced file may not work for the next person, whose local sync path is different, or who has not synced at all and uses the files in the original SharePoint library. Issues like sync errors and file corruptions, multi-user authoring problems, all these can be avoided when working with the file directly in the SharePoint library.
As I see it, the main purpose of syncing is to work with files in the context of Windows Explorer instead of in SharePoint views. That can be useful if you need to take files offline, but if your work environment has a stable internet connection, I would always advocate for working directly in the SharePoint libraries. Especially after a migration from File Shares to SharePoint, I want people to learn how awesome SharePoint is and let them experience all the things they can do in SharePoint that they can’t do in Windows Explorer.
Those that hit the sync button right away will miss out on a lot of cool features. And then there’s those who don’t understand the implications of their actions on synced files, like the CEO of one client, who was cleaning up his local computer and happily deleted several synced folders, without realising that he was deleting the files in SharePoint as well. I spent a few hours pulling stuff back from the recycle bin.
For the regular office worker who doesn’t know much about how things work under the hood, I feel that using sync adds more cons than pros. Adding a link to OneDrive will also sync files to the local drive, but now people have to learn that they can delete a linked folder without affecting the underlying files. They have to remember symbols and icons. Microsoft changing the wording of commands every five minutes complicates things even more and requires training and education.
I’d much rather the users spent that training and education time on learning how SharePoint works out of the box, in the browser. Because there is so much more to SharePoint than accessing files in a folder structure.
cheers, Ingeborg
Ingeborg:
With Files on Demand, only the file metadata is synced back and forth. Since most of the files aren’t changed very often, that’s minimal traffic. Only files the user has asked to store locally are actually synced. The great thing about having the option to sync locally is it lets each person work the way they choose. Whether we like it or not, many people (including me!) prefer working on local copies of files, not in the browser.
I totally get the issues with links between Excel files. That’s a totally different problem, and it sure would be great if Microsoft came up with a nice solution for it.
Microsoft’s continual renaming and moving things absolutely makes it harder for everyone. But with a small amount of training, I think the OneDrive concepts can work for many people. We can’t expect them to “get it” without help, though.
M.
Marc – great post and this was something I hadn’t every thought of using. Mainly due to from experience from years ago, I never liked or found consistency of the ‘Add to Shortcut to OneDrive’. But…like you, I’m going try this out.
One benefit, possibly, is less PC resources used if OneDrive is not constantly checking for synced items? Almost seems like that now that I’ve un-synced my site libraries, I can get to the files via the shortcut, and not as much lag as when I still had all my libraries synced.
One Con…possibly…is that my Storage Sense policies to clean up synced files after X days, no longer catches the files that you open from the shortcuts. However…I think I need to wait until my X days is reached and check again. Now that I think of it…I bet that was my reason they didn’t unsync. 🤔