Windows 10: Using OneDrive with Placeholders

Been messing around with onedrive and use of placeholders. Once I got hang of it, it is quite easy.

There are a several ways you can do things

1) create/copy folders under onedrive, and simply sync files as in 15063 etc. Here the files are in onedrive folder in pc and on web.

Easy to just drag a copy of a folder to onedrive folder and folder automatically synced to web,

2) create/copy folders under onedrive, and initially sync files as in 15063 etc. Open onedrive from system tray and select to use files on demand. Then if you right click on folder, you can elect to keep files on host and web, or just on web(clear space link).

This is essentially the old style place holders.

3) There is a third way that is quite neat - rather than dragging copy of a folder to one drive folder as in (1) above, you can create a junction link in n admin command prompt e.g.

mklink /j "C:\users\username\onedrive\foldername1" "X:\yourpath\foldername2" (foldernames can be same or different)

This shows a folder foldername1 in the onedrive folders, and shows the files in foldername2 on X directory.

So if you add or delete a file to foldername2, it gets synced to a web folder foldrname1 (you can turn off foldername1 syncing if you like from settings.

Note: if you use a junction link, you cannot free the space i.e. create placeholders in the linked directory.

Also removing a junction link removes foldername1 from onedrive folder and web but leaves foldername 2 intact. So if you decide to remove sysmlink but want to keep files on web, you have to copy foldername1 forst to a new folder by going online, or else you will have to drag a copy of foldername2 to onedrive and re-synce all files (I found thi out the hard way!).

Depending on what you are doing, you may use a combination of placeholders, simply syncing copies, or junction links.

On my tablet, I use placeholders. On my PC, I junction link download, and document folders so web is always in synce, but use placeholders for less frequently used stuff.

Far better now.

:)

 

Many File Thumnails Will not Display on Windows 10 but some will

I use OneDrive and just did a test. I have thousands of images and most of them only show the image placeholder in my OneDrive folder. This only started happening recently.

I copied a folder of around 300 images from my OneDrive folder in File Manager, where only the placeholders were visible, to another folder outside OneDrive and, hey presto, all the thumbnails reappeared.

So it looks like Microsoft need to take a look at the interaction between OneDrive and File Manager.

 

No OneDrive placeholders on WIn 10?

No OneDrive placeholders on WIn 10?