WTFDrive for Business



  • As we all know, to fix Windows you reinstall it. Lately, I've done this many times at work and one of the key components we use for sharing documents is OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

    So you download the neat package from portal.office.com (if you're an Office 365 customer) that installs all the office applications - including OneDrive for Business - and off you go, or so you would think.

    The first and well known :wtf: is that since Windows 8 or 8.1 (don't remember exactly), the normal "OneDrive" is installed by default and keeps sticking around in your libraries. This has resulted in much confusion along the lines "why my documents don't show up on this different machine or online?" as people mistakenly put files there.

    The second :wtf: is that when you first launch OneDrive for Business, it asks you with a single text input line what libraries you want to synchronize. Ok, fine, I already know I can input SharePoint paths there and it will synchronize them but the "OneDrive for Business" folder does not show up in your Libraries. You can only either input a path in that dialog of cancel it.

    Reboot? No, it still doesn't synchronize your personal folder. It's running in the background and you can see it in notification area but it does squat.

    Fine, we have some SharePoint folders we want to synchronize so I open up the dialog again and input a path. It asks for login information in another dialog and I write them and hit the big blue login button but nothing happens. With trial and error I noticed that if I hit the return key it will try logging in but the button does nothing. How fucking nice, Microsoft.

    Will it synchronize the SharePoint folder? Of course not! It will give some generic error message that explains nothing.

    After exhausting all options I could think of, I closed it from notification area and launched it again manually... IT IMMEDIATELY STARTS SYNCHRONIZING THE PERSONAL FOLDER. And synchronizing SharePoint folders works as well.

    WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! Do note that the system was completely rebooted and it showed up in the notification area.



  • Repeated this again on a clean install of Windows 10 Pro + Office 365 stuff. It will only work after it has been killed from notification area and manually started again. This is a permanent feature.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @hifi said in WTFDrive for Business:

    the normal "OneDrive" is installed by default and keeps sticking around in your libraries

    There are group policy settings for disabling and disallowing access to the built-in OneDrive. No idea whether those settings affect OneDrive for Business, but it's worth a try.

    Edit: Only one group policy setting in Win 10 (used to be multiple ones in Win 8 IIRC). You'll find it under Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\OneDrive.



  • @asdf Thanks, I set it for myself and see what happens when I reboot.


  • BINNED

    @asdf said in WTFDrive for Business:

    No idea whether those settings affect OneDrive for Business, but it's worth a try.

    They shouldn't because it except the name 'OneDrive' they don't share anything.
    I hate the branding around OneDrive ... it seems to be designed specifically to confuse people:

    • OneDrive: consumer product, data is in the Cloud in your Microsoft Account. Installed by default on Windows 8 & higher. Appears as a white cloud in the system tray. Pro: You can still use that old Hotmail Account to log on

    • OneDrive for Business: Part of Office/SharePoint, the old 'My SharePoint' thing. Your personal space on the company SharePoint. Independent if that SharePoint is in the MS Cloud, hosted or old scool on premises. The synchronization tool allows to synchronize any public SharePoint Library, including the personal library called 'OneDrive'. Appears as a dark blue cloud in the system tray.

    To make matters worse there are two very distinct versions of the OfB tool:

    • Default One, part of the Office installer. Can synchronize libraries but only whole libraries.

    • A New, Enhanced One: Based on the OneDrive app built into Windows. Can only synchronize the 'OneDrive' Library but allows selective synchronizing. MS claimed to make this the Official One and turning all three versions into One. Several years and a full Office version later nothing has changed.
      This however gives you the exiting possibility to have 3(!) OneDrive apps installed and working on 1 pc!

    Further muddling the waters: OfB uses the Office Upload Center to do the actual uploading and credentials aren't stored in the app itself but the vault thingy under the Configuration screen whatever it's called. OfB is internally still called 'Groove' like it's 2009 or something.

    @hifi said in WTFDrive for Business:

    after it has been killed from notification area and manually started again

    I think you are killing/starting different versions of the OneDrive app here ... you can't use the default Windows OneDrive app to sync with SharePoint.


  • BINNED

    @Luhmann

    Also ... no I didn't spend much time getting that 💩 working, why did you ask?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann said in WTFDrive for Business:

    This however gives you the exiting possibility to have 3(!) OneDrive apps installed and working on 1 pc!

    This reminds me of the confusing malarkey around Skype.



  • @Luhmann said in WTFDrive for Business:

    @hifi said in WTFDrive for Business:

    after it has been killed from notification area and manually started again

    I think you are killing/starting different versions of the OneDrive app here ... you can't use the default Windows OneDrive app to sync with SharePoint.

    If the default Windows OneDrive app has a blue cloud in notification area and a context menu title of "OneDrive for Business", you could be right. The context menu has only two options, one is to synchronize a new library and second is exit.


  • BINNED

    @hifi

    🤷

    I haven't heard of that issue right after installing.
    Did you try rebooting? 🍹


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Luhmann said in WTFDrive for Business:

    Did you try rebooting?

    I personally ignore OneDrive for at least the first three reboots/logon cycles. The first one (Just after OOBE and initial sign on) is borked, and pretty much immediately (thanks, Windows Update, for starting a check immediately after setup. That will improve my opinion on the speediness of Windows 10!) gets updated to "The New Version", but unfortunately this doesn't apply until reboot because "Files cannot be updated when in use".

    On second reboot, the OneDrive app launches, but figures out it needs to do an update (You'll see the notification balloonNotification Center Interactive Box Thing That We're Totally Not Copying From Everyone Else pop up telling you such), but usually also fails to correctly apply. This is also usually because it's popped a self-modal dialog asking you to sign in. So, reboot!

    Third reboot, OneDrive for lUsers should finally be up and running! You should now be able to successfully sign in to your (XBoxliveMSNHotmail) account.

    Of course, this it 131% different from installing OneDrive for Business (Is it really still called groove? :wtf:).


    Filed under: Cascaded del/ins blocks don't seem to work quite right...



  • @Luhmann said in WTFDrive for Business:

    Did you try rebooting? 🍹

    Yes, that was the first thing I tried and it didn't help. The running/auto-starting OfB is fucked up until it is manually closed and re-opened.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann said in WTFDrive for Business:

    I hate the branding around OneDrive ... it seems to be designed specifically to confuse people

    The guys who named the file manager and the web browser the same thing are laughing back wherever they were relocated to after being put in the Witness Protection Program for doing that.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @FrostCat said in WTFDrive for Business:

    the file manager and the web browser the same thing

    Oh, you mean explorer and iexplore? Yeah, that was a dick move.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Tsaukpaetra said in WTFDrive for Business:

    @FrostCat said in WTFDrive for Business:

    the file manager and the web browser the same thing

    Oh, you mean explorer and iexplore? Yeah, that was a dick move.

    Yes, but no. If you ask a regular user to run [anything] Explorer, they will run the web browser. There isn't really anything you can say to prevent it, either, because a lot of them don't know what "My Computer" is.


  • FoxDev

    @Tsaukpaetra Well, sort of. For a long time, the only explorer was File Explorer, so it made sense to call it explorer. I suppose IE could have been called internetexplorer, but then you could potentially run into short vs long filename issues, which were a real thing back when IE first came out. So they did the next best thing: iexplore.

    For the record, Edge is MicrosoftEdge.



  • @RaceProUK They probably thought they were helping. 'see these two things are the same. one explores a hierarchical tree of linked files, the other explores a tree of linked files with more formatting. Drawing parallels will help our users learn faster'

    Now that they don't work the same way, Microsoft is fucked over by design decisions it made in the past and backwards compatibility. Again.


  • FoxDev

    @AyGeePlus I think it's more MS likes to name their products in an obvious manner, hence Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, etc.



  • @RaceProUK They could probably have got away with just calling it 'internet', now that I think about it. It's not Office Word Writer, it's just Office Word. Excel must be a pun on 'cell', but powerpoint seems arbitrary to me. Regular slideshows involve pointing, MS slideshows involve powerpointing?


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @AyGeePlus said in WTFDrive for Business:

    powerpoint seems arbitrary to me. Regular slideshows involve pointing, MS slideshows involve powerpointing?

    Possibly. Maybe the idea is to Powerfully make a Point?

    @RaceProUK said in WTFDrive for Business:

    I think it's more MS likes to name their products in an obvious manner, hence Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Groove, etc.

    CTFY. Why it was ever called "Groove"... Oh, apparently it was actually developed and created by another company prior to Microsoft absorbing them....


  • Java Dev

    I have spent quite some time explaining to various people that both explorers can handle FTP, and that file explorer is the one you need to use if you want to upload.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @AyGeePlus said in WTFDrive for Business:

    They probably thought they were helping. 'see these two things are the same. one explores a hierarchical tree of linked files, the other explores a tree of linked files with more formatting. Drawing parallels will help our users learn faster'

    Weren't they very tightly linked early on? Like, to the extent that you could enter a URL in Windows Explorer and see the web page?


  • BINNED

    @PleegWat said in WTFDrive for Business:

    both explorers can handle FTP

    another reason the kill off FTP 🔥



  • @Jaloopa said in WTFDrive for Business:

    Weren't they very tightly linked early on? Like, to the extent that you could enter a URL in Windows Explorer and see the web page?

    Very much so. It just changed the view from a folder to a web page. That was still around with IE6 and Windows XP IIRC.



  • @Luhmann It must be the same Marketing Team that came up with the name "Skype for Business" when it is just Lync.



  • @hifi It was even more absurd than that; folders were actually web pages hosting an ActiveX component. With some fiddling, you could change the look of your folder to have its own header and what not.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @AlexMedia said in WTFDrive for Business:

    With some fiddling, you could change the look of your folder to have its own header and what not.

    Oh yeah! That was very much still a thing, when recovery partitions didn't get a special ID that made Windows hide it and refuse to mount it (despite being an NTFS formatted partition).

    From what I recall, it basically had a crafted desktop.ini file that referenced a class, that replaced the normal explorer view with an HTML page telling you not to screw with it.


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