OneDrive: Fetch files on a PC ends on July 31, 2020

[German]Brief information for users of Microsoft's OneDrive-Client. Support for retrieving files from a client will be discontinued on July 31, 2020. Here is a summary, what I found out so far.


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What exactly is this about?

Microsoft had implemented a special feature for the OneDrive-Client. You could retrieve files from another PC via its client. Remember, this worked since Windows 8, Microsoft writes about it in this article:  azu in this article:

Use OneDrive to fetch files on a PC

If you have the OneDrive desktop app for Windows installed on a PC, you can use the Fetch files feature to access all your files on that PC from another computer by going to the OneDrive website. You can even access network locations if they're included in the PC's libraries or mapped as drives.

When you browse a PC's files remotely, you can download copies of them to work on. You can also stream video and view photos in a slide show. To access files on your PC remotely, make sure the PC you want to access is turned on and connected to the Internet. OneDrive also needs to be running on that PC, and the Fetch files setting must be selected.

In the linked document, Microsoft provides guidance on how to set this up and manage it.

Support ends on July 31, 2020

This feature is apparently hardly used by anyone. Recently, this article contains a notice that the function will be discontinued. Blog-reader Karl pointed this out to me in the following tweet (thanks):

Within this article Microsoft says now:


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Notes:

  • After July 31, 2020, you will no longer be able to fetch files from your PC. However, you can sync files and folders to OneDrive and then access those files from your web browser or your phone. To automatically sync the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders on your PC, you can turn on OneDrive PC folder backup.

  • You can't fetch files that are on a PC running Windows 8.1. You can use a PC running Windows 8.1 to fetch files that are on another PC.

  • You can't fetch files that are on a Mac, but you can use a Mac to fetch files that are on a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 10.

  • You can't use the OneDrive mobile app to fetch files, but you can use a mobile browser running in desktop mode to fetch files that are on a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 10.

Sounds terribly complicated again – basically it means: the data must run over the user's OneDrive cloud storage at Microsoft in order to be accessed by different devices.


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