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mhasanbulli

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 5, 2020
10
1
Auckland, New Zealand
Hello,

I recently started working for a new company and they are using OneDrive quite heavily. However, Files On-Demand feature is not available for me on macOS 10.15.5. I am the only one using a Mac. I know those on Windows have this feature available to them.

Things I have tried (not in a particular order)
  • Uninstall and re-install
  • Install Apple Store one
  • Install standalone version from Microsoft Downloads
  • Remove Office 365 and reinstall
  • Restart the Mac
  • Restart the OneDrive App
Whatever I do, I cannot seem to have the Files On-Demand show up for me.
Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 9.06.09 AM.png

Most posts available around the web are those from when this feature was first rolled out to macOS.

Has anyone faced a similar issues? If you have, what was your resolution?

Cheers.
 
What version of OneDrive? Mine is 20.052.0311.0011 (from the Apple App Store) and does have Files On-Demand in the Preferences tab of Preferences.
 
Use a mac uninstaller tool to completely delete Onedrive and try again. I think one of your .prefs file is getting corrupted and you're also using an Outdated version.

This is what my Onedrive is showing.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 9.32.05 PM.png
Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 9.32.54 PM.png
 
Hmm. I did that just now. I used AppCleaner to remove all Microsoft Office apps, restart the Mac. I downloaded the apps from Office 365 portal and reinstalled them. It has not resolved it. I cannot think of anything else.

Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 10.01.04 PM.png
Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 10.01.08 PM.png

Edit: I have also tried resetting OneDrive by following this guide. But, still the same.
 
Last edited:
Hmm. I did that just now. I used AppCleaner to remove all Microsoft Office apps, restart the Mac. I downloaded the apps from Office 365 portal and reinstalled them. It has not resolved it. I cannot think of anything else.

View attachment 921965View attachment 921966
Edit: I have also tried resetting OneDrive by following this guide. But, still the same.


Use Appcleaner to delete all office 365 files also instead of downloading Onedrive from Office portal. Download Onedrive from Appstore also to see if your permissions is being restricted. Create a dummy account and see does the On-Demand settings show. If it do then its something in your Office account preventing you from seeing that option.
 
I have downloaded iTrash and removed OneDrive completely. I then downloaded it from Apple Store. Nothing has changed.

As @NastyNatex suggested, I added another account to test it. I still do not get Files On-Demand but I have one extra option on the new account I have added. I have "Show notifications about sharing or editing" option available on the new account.
Screen Shot 2020-06-07 at 10.37.37 AM.png

I will go ahead and completely remove Office 365 apps and install OneDrive again. I will post an update after I do all of those.
 
I downloaded iTrash and removed every Microsoft product including Edge and Teams. Then I only installed OneDrive from Apple Store. But, that did not solve the problem either.

I feel like I am missing a step but I cannot think of anything honestly.
 
OP, is the drive your OneDrive folder is on formatted APFS? This is a requirement for files on demand.


Yeah. I have check that. Here is the diskinfo output.

Code:
   Volume Name:               Macintosh HD
   Mounted:                   Yes
   Mount Point:               /
   Partition Type:            41504653-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   File System Personality:   APFS
   Type (Bundle):             apfs
   Name (User Visible):       APFS
   Owners:                    Enabled
 
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Does this help any @mhasanbulli ?


Thanks for the article. Pinning did not work. This article on-top of the link you have sent gave me an idea. When I check the preferences of OneDrive, the option FilesOnDemandEnabled is not there. So, I editted the plist file hoping it would enable the options. However when OneDrive starts, it overwrites the plist file.
 
Very strange problem. Found lots of issues with this on answers.microsoft.com

I found this on answers.microsoft.com - seems it helped one person that had the issue.



1. Quit OneDrive. (Select the cloud icon in the top tray, then select Settings > Quit OneDrive.)
2. Find OneDrive in your Applications folder.
3. Right-click OneDrive and select Show Package Contents.
4. Browse to the Contents > Resources folder.
5. Double-click ResetOneDriveApp.command (or ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command, if you're using the standalone app).
6. Start OneDrive and finish the setup process.



Please check the cache again to make sure that there is no file in cache folder:
Quit OneDrive> Delete the json files (*.json) in ~/Library/Caches/OneDrive> Relaunch OneDrive.



This seemed to help the person that had the issue

 
Try booting in Safe Mode and drive using OneDrive and see if the issue happens.

Also, I would suggest create a new user account and login to the new user account. Try to use OneDrive in the new user account and see if the issue still happens.

 
Very strange problem. Found lots of issues with this on answers.microsoft.com

I found this on answers.microsoft.com - seems it helped one person that had the issue.



1. Quit OneDrive. (Select the cloud icon in the top tray, then select Settings > Quit OneDrive.)
2. Find OneDrive in your Applications folder.
3. Right-click OneDrive and select Show Package Contents.
4. Browse to the Contents > Resources folder.
5. Double-click ResetOneDriveApp.command (or ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command, if you're using the standalone app).
6. Start OneDrive and finish the setup process.



Please check the cache again to make sure that there is no file in cache folder:
Quit OneDrive> Delete the json files (*.json) in ~/Library/Caches/OneDrive> Relaunch OneDrive.



This seemed to help the person that had the issue

Thanks for the info. I have tried resetting OneDrive and made sure I deleted any JSON files in the cache folder. But, it did not work :(
 
Seems like you've done all the things you could on the client side. It makes me wonder if there isn't something on the server side causing the issue. I'm the admin for our Office 365 where I work, and I checked the OneDrive admin center for any potential settings, but couldn't really find anything that seemed like it would cause this.

Files on Demand works fine for my OneDrive for Business account on my Mac. You might try creating a Microsoft account (i think you get 5gb free storage) and see if you can sync a personal account and enable files on demand. That would at least tell you if there might be an account issue on the work side of things.
 
Try booting in Safe Mode and drive using OneDrive and see if the issue happens.

Also, I would suggest create a new user account and login to the new user account. Try to use OneDrive in the new user account and see if the issue still happens.

I have tried the Safe mode but nothing different.
[automerge]1591734311[/automerge]
Seems like you've done all the things you could on the client side. It makes me wonder if there isn't something on the server side causing the issue. I'm the admin for our Office 365 where I work, and I checked the OneDrive admin center for any potential settings, but couldn't really find anything that seemed like it would cause this.

Files on Demand works fine for my OneDrive for Business account on my Mac. You might try creating a Microsoft account (i think you get 5gb free storage) and see if you can sync a personal account and enable files on demand. That would at least tell you if there might be an account issue on the work side of things.
I had a chat to our Office 365 admin and he said the same thing. He could not see any settings related to OneDrive Files On-Demand.

I already have a personal Outlook account. I added that to OneDrive. I get one extra option with the personal account which is "Show notifications about sharing or editing".

Shall I create a brand new account and try it with the new account?
 
I have tried the Safe mode but nothing different.
[automerge]1591734311[/automerge]

I had a chat to our Office 365 admin and he said the same thing. He could not see any settings related to OneDrive Files On-Demand.

I already have a personal Outlook account. I added that to OneDrive. I get one extra option with the personal account which is "Show notifications about sharing or editing".

Shall I create a brand new account and try it with the new account?




There is a setting - Check the link above.

Enable Files On-DemandSpecifies whether Files On-Demand is enabled. If you don't set this setting, Files On-Demand will be enabled automatically as we roll out the feature, and users can turn the setting on or offFilesOnDemandEnabled (Bool): When set to true, new users who set up the sync app will download online-only files by default. When set to false, Files On-Demand will be disabled and users won't be able to turn it on.


So, I am wondering if this isn't somehow set for your infrastructure by the admins or maybe it was set in error.

EDIT - Never mind - I see you did this in your first post. OP, I am at a loss as to what could be causing this. Other than a call to Microsoft, I'm out of ideas....
 
Last edited:
Just an update on this.

After I gave up trying to resolve the issue, I suddenly had Files On-Demand available this morning when I came into work. I did not have these options last night at home but I have them now.

I am not sure what resolved this.

Thank you for all the tips and tricks :)
 
Hello,

I recently started working for a new company and they are using OneDrive quite heavily. However, Files On-Demand feature is not available for me on macOS 10.15.5. I am the only one using a Mac. I know those on Windows have this feature available to them.

Things I have tried (not in a particular order)
  • Uninstall and re-install
  • Install Apple Store one
  • Install standalone version from Microsoft Downloads
  • Remove Office 365 and reinstall
  • Restart the Mac
  • Restart the OneDrive App
Whatever I do, I cannot seem to have the Files On-Demand show up for me. View attachment 921895
Most posts available around the web are those from when this feature was first rolled out to macOS.

Has anyone faced a similar issues? If you have, what was your resolution?

Cheers.
This worked for us:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :FilesOnDemandEnabled bool true" ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.OneDrive.plist
 
For me just now happened the same, onedrive just randomly started downloading everything and files on demand option even does not show up
 
Found this while searching for the issue on my machine.

Files on Demand is added to Extensions manager in Apple menu. I had to enable it manually to turn it on.

Most of the recommendations allowed me to overcome the dreaded Files On Demand won't start error -61 on Catalina. The only thing missing was that I had to trick OneDrive to use a folder on my external drive (removablevolumename). First I converted the volume to APFS as recommended in this thread. Then when I ran setup it wouldn't accept that external drive because it was removable (volume/removablevolumename/OneDrive). OneDrive insisted on using the space constrained main Mac volume under user/myusername. I recalled that one of my external drives had the users/myusername folder. I had previously setup symlinked folders to force mac to use the external drive vice the mac volume. In OneDrive setup when prompted to choose the OneDrive location, I chose this /volume/removablevolumename/users/myusername as the location to use for my OneDrive folder.
 
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