There is a trend on Lemmy to hate on Windows, Microsoft etc. I get it, they deserve the flak. But I haven’t had many issues with Onedrive in particular. Is it because Windows has it preinstalled and tried to get you to use it?
I’ve found it to be unnecessarily complex, confusing, and tightly coupled with other microsoft products.
I’m a consultant with several assistants. I really just want to sync a ~20gb folder with those assistants. This is easily achievable with dropbox or nextcloud for example, it works exactly as you’d expect.
In onedrive it was always just a muck around. What is sharepoint and how is it related to onedrive? Why do different staff have access to different features in some folders but not others? How can staff create upload requests for clients? How do I avoid being notified about every change a staff member makes?
I always felt as though I needed to have some kind of microsoft certification in order to address this very simple use case.
I’m sure someone will be along in a moment to tell me how easy all of this is and how silly I am for not being able to address it. I don’t care. I also think it’s fair to point out that this microsoft ecosystem is incredibly powerful and the configuration issues I find frustrating are required for larger more complex organisations.
The problem with onedrive is now when you visit your parents for tech support, all their important stuff is on the “hard drive called one drive”, since Windows now just makes it look the same as a hard drive on your computer. And once that hard drive fills up, which will be pretty fast with default settings, then it starts asking them to pay money, or their important files will be lost… at their level of technical skill, that is basically the legal version of those scams that encrypt your files and then extort you to unencrypt them.
For those of us who know what is going on, it’s only a mild inconvenience. Just gotta put less agressive back up settings on and remove anything from onedrive that isn’t needed. But think about what it’s like for all the people who would get themselves into that situation and don’t have someone that could fix it for them. They either pay onedrive the extortion money, lose those files, or take the computer to someone to fix it for a cost. Why make those the default settings? Why not even pop up like a selection of default settings with a short description of what to expect from each selection. But it would cost more money and generate less, so no matter how user-friendly it would be, the only way it’ll happen is under court order.
Edit: also for any of us that use windows professional, alot of these problems will seem foreign to us. Of course, all the predatory stuff is exclusive to windows home edition. That’s the one where they are agreeing to have a bad time because it made the computer they bought in the store look cheaper than the one next to it.
My biggest frustration with OneDrive is in combination with Office (on my work PC). You browse to a local folder and save, but instead of saving it locally and syncing to the cloud, it saves to the cloud and downloads, and it is slow.
I get the hate for Windows, but I have to agree with you on OneDrive. I’ve been using it for years since they started giving you a terabyte of storage with an Office365 subscription, and it’s never caused me a single issue. It just works.
By default, it simply gets remapped from C:/Users/Username/Documents to C:/Users/Username/OneDrive/Documents and remains accessible through the %USERPROFILE%/Documents environment variable.
Not exactly hard to create a symlink if you need it either.
If it was turn on or off I’d be fine with it. But it’s forced and even the default if you go to the backup app. All your local files are stored in a OneDrive folder with subfolders like desktop under OneDrive.
If it had a standard API so I could use my NAS instead of MS cloud it would be amazing.
All your local files are NOT saved in OneDrive by default wtf.
You can create a local user account instead of a ms one when installing Windows, then there’s no user OneDrive can log into and it doesn’t sync shit. Furthermore, the local documents/etc folders point to your user’s folder, not onedrive. Even of you fucked all of that up, there’s tons of files both in your appdata folder and program configuration files that are not saved in OneDrive. OneDrive doesn’t launch with a “backup everything in every folder” option by default, that’s something that you need to opt in and enable after logging into it.
Honestly, do better with your system before complaining. Also, you can create simlinks into network folders on your NAS as you mentioned to emulate whatever you want so idk what you mean by “it would be amazing”, whatever it is you want to do with it, it already is “amazing” according to you for your use-case.
Furthermore, the local documents/etc folders point to your user’s folder, not onedrive.
Not anymore. Even without Onedrive syncing, the local hard drive root folder is now Onedrive. This is new.
OneDrive doesn’t launch with a “backup everything in every folder
Read it again. I said the “backup app” defaults to wanting to backup using Onedrive. Type in “Backup” in search box. The Settings “Backup” launches. Onedrive is at the top.
I just went through all this with a new PC install for my 80 year old mother in law.
Honestly, do better with your system before complaining.
How about install an actual new version of Windows 11 from scratch before making claims about how Windows works. Do it without using the internet to look for work arounds.
There is a trend on Lemmy to hate on Windows, Microsoft etc. I get it, they deserve the flak. But I haven’t had many issues with Onedrive in particular. Is it because Windows has it preinstalled and tried to get you to use it?
I’ve found it to be unnecessarily complex, confusing, and tightly coupled with other microsoft products.
I’m a consultant with several assistants. I really just want to sync a ~20gb folder with those assistants. This is easily achievable with dropbox or nextcloud for example, it works exactly as you’d expect.
In onedrive it was always just a muck around. What is sharepoint and how is it related to onedrive? Why do different staff have access to different features in some folders but not others? How can staff create upload requests for clients? How do I avoid being notified about every change a staff member makes?
I always felt as though I needed to have some kind of microsoft certification in order to address this very simple use case.
I’m sure someone will be along in a moment to tell me how easy all of this is and how silly I am for not being able to address it. I don’t care. I also think it’s fair to point out that this microsoft ecosystem is incredibly powerful and the configuration issues I find frustrating are required for larger more complex organisations.
Because it’s constantly shoved on my face.
The problem with onedrive is now when you visit your parents for tech support, all their important stuff is on the “hard drive called one drive”, since Windows now just makes it look the same as a hard drive on your computer. And once that hard drive fills up, which will be pretty fast with default settings, then it starts asking them to pay money, or their important files will be lost… at their level of technical skill, that is basically the legal version of those scams that encrypt your files and then extort you to unencrypt them.
For those of us who know what is going on, it’s only a mild inconvenience. Just gotta put less agressive back up settings on and remove anything from onedrive that isn’t needed. But think about what it’s like for all the people who would get themselves into that situation and don’t have someone that could fix it for them. They either pay onedrive the extortion money, lose those files, or take the computer to someone to fix it for a cost. Why make those the default settings? Why not even pop up like a selection of default settings with a short description of what to expect from each selection. But it would cost more money and generate less, so no matter how user-friendly it would be, the only way it’ll happen is under court order.
Edit: also for any of us that use windows professional, alot of these problems will seem foreign to us. Of course, all the predatory stuff is exclusive to windows home edition. That’s the one where they are agreeing to have a bad time because it made the computer they bought in the store look cheaper than the one next to it.
My biggest frustration with OneDrive is in combination with Office (on my work PC). You browse to a local folder and save, but instead of saving it locally and syncing to the cloud, it saves to the cloud and downloads, and it is slow.
That is a trend because 99% of Microsoft products are shit
I get the hate for Windows, but I have to agree with you on OneDrive. I’ve been using it for years since they started giving you a terabyte of storage with an Office365 subscription, and it’s never caused me a single issue. It just works.
Onedrive tries to take away access to your documents folder. The new one it creates is very difficult to use with a terminal
Care to elaborate on “take away access”?
By default, it simply gets remapped from C:/Users/Username/Documents to C:/Users/Username/OneDrive/Documents and remains accessible through the %USERPROFILE%/Documents environment variable.
Not exactly hard to create a symlink if you need it either.
If it was turn on or off I’d be fine with it. But it’s forced and even the default if you go to the backup app. All your local files are stored in a OneDrive folder with subfolders like desktop under OneDrive.
If it had a standard API so I could use my NAS instead of MS cloud it would be amazing.
All your local files are NOT saved in OneDrive by default wtf.
You can create a local user account instead of a ms one when installing Windows, then there’s no user OneDrive can log into and it doesn’t sync shit. Furthermore, the local documents/etc folders point to your user’s folder, not onedrive. Even of you fucked all of that up, there’s tons of files both in your appdata folder and program configuration files that are not saved in OneDrive. OneDrive doesn’t launch with a “backup everything in every folder” option by default, that’s something that you need to opt in and enable after logging into it.
Honestly, do better with your system before complaining. Also, you can create simlinks into network folders on your NAS as you mentioned to emulate whatever you want so idk what you mean by “it would be amazing”, whatever it is you want to do with it, it already is “amazing” according to you for your use-case.
While technically possible, it isn’t allowed by default and they continue to block exploits that allow it.
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft-might-have-blocked-a-sneaky-bypass-that-let-you-setup-windows-11-without-a-microsoft-account
Not anymore. Even without Onedrive syncing, the local hard drive root folder is now Onedrive. This is new.
Read it again. I said the “backup app” defaults to wanting to backup using Onedrive. Type in “Backup” in search box. The Settings “Backup” launches. Onedrive is at the top.
I just went through all this with a new PC install for my 80 year old mother in law.
How about install an actual new version of Windows 11 from scratch before making claims about how Windows works. Do it without using the internet to look for work arounds.