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Sync / backup 'Public Folders' to OneDrive?

Question

Monday, November 30, 2015 9:00 PM | 1 vote

My wife and I share a desktop running W10 Pro (clean installation, not an upgrade).  We share files using Public Folders.  I want to use the OneDrive storage offered with my Outlook.com account as a backup system.  Is it possible to automatically sync C:\Users\Public Folders to my OneDrive?

I also have Office 2016 Pro Plus.  I notice it includes 'OneDrive for Business'.  I haven't taken the first look at it so I don't know its capabilities.  Would it be better suited for what I want to do?  Are there better ways to approach this?

Thanks!

Charlie Spencer

All replies (14)

Tuesday, December 8, 2015 10:44 PM ✅Answered | 1 vote

Nope. 

Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Monday, November 30, 2015 9:17 PM | 1 vote

Yes, you can

This might help : http://www.howtogeek.com/222817/how-to-configure-onedrive-to-sync-only-certain-folders-in-windows-10/

Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015 12:50 AM | 1 vote

Unfortunately, that's the opposite of what I want.

The link describes how to select the folders that already exist on your OneDrive for downloading / sync'ing with the local OneDrive folder in your C:\Users\username% directory.  It doesn't describe how to choose individual folders from the C: for uploading / sync'ing.

Thanks anyway.

Charlie Spencer

Wednesday, December 2, 2015 1:27 AM | 1 vote

You can use SyncToy to sync the folder/files from Public folder to Onedrive Selected folder. 

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/developingfordynamicsgp/archive/2014/09/12/synchronizing-any-folder-on-your-system-with-onedrive.aspx

Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015 2:55 AM | 1 vote

Hi,

Try create a symbolic link for public folder to OneDrive, it should also work fine in OneDrive for Windows 10.

http://www.howtogeek.com/174765/how-to-sync-any-folder-with-skydrive-on-windows-8.1/

Please note: Since the websites are not hosted by Microsoft, the links may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Regards,

D. Wu

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].

Friday, December 4, 2015 12:14 PM | 1 vote

That looks promising.  I'll give it a try this weekend.

Charlie Spencer

Friday, December 4, 2015 12:17 PM | 1 vote

From the linked article:

"... we could instead move the actual folder itself to SkyDrive and then use a symbolic link at the folder’s original location to trick the original program."

If I understand this correctly, this approach would move the data up to OneDrive and link to it.  I want the data to remain local and use OneDrive strictly as a backup, not as the primary storage location.  Let me know if I've misinterpreted this.

Thanks.

Charlie Spencer

Monday, December 7, 2015 12:57 PM | 1 vote

Arnav, maybe I'm not understanding how SyncToy works.

I don't see a way to use it to sync with the cloud-based OneDrive folder.  It looks like I can sync Public Folders with the local OneDrive folder associated with my local user account on the C: drive.  It looks like that results in two local copies of everything - the originals in Public Folders, and sync'ed copies in C:\Users\myusername\OneDrive.

Obviously the stuff in myusername\OneDrive gets sync'ed with the cloud OneDrive. I'm looking for a way to sync folders other than myusername\OneDrive directly with the cloud, and avoid the wasted storage space and potential confusion over local duplicates.

I get the feeling I'm misunderstanding something significant about how OneDrive operates and what MS intended it to be used for.

Thanks.

Charlie Spencer

Monday, December 7, 2015 11:09 PM | 1 vote

Public folder --> (SyncTool) --> Copy to One Drive --> Copied to cloud. 

Sync its a one way sync,  you can use OneDrive as a backup not as primary location. 

Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015 12:17 PM | 1 vote

So there's no way to go:

C:\Users\Public --> (SyncTool) --> OneDrive.com cloud?

Thanks.

Charlie Spencer

Wednesday, December 9, 2015 11:21 AM | 1 vote

That's disappointing.  Thanks for the information.

Charlie Spencer

Thursday, December 10, 2015 12:56 AM

Hi,

Symbolic links, otherwise known as symlinks, are basically advanced shortcuts. You can create symbolic links to individual files or folders, and then these will appear like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link even though the symbolic link only points to their real location.

I also talked with a colleague who work at OneDrive for business, and seems like the symbolic link is the best way to do that. But users from OneDrive for business forum might give more effective suggestion since we are not experts on this product.

Regards,

D. Wu

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help, and unmark the answers if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].

Thursday, December 10, 2015 11:48 AM

That's great, but as I told Arnav earlier, I don't want the data residing only on OneDrive.com with at link back to it.  I want the data residing locally, with OneDrive.com as backup storage.  As I understood the instructions he linked to at howtogeek.com, with symbolic links, the data resides only on the could.  That's not what I want.

Thanks anyway.  Please let me know if I'm completely mistaken about this.

Charlie Spencer

Wednesday, November 28, 2018 10:20 AM

Here is how I have resolved this need to sync the Public Folders to One Drive. This is somewhat ugly but it works. The added benefit is that when you set up a new computer, all the Public files can be there on the new computer as well. In my house each user logs in with their own standard account without Admin rights (there are 2 local admin accounts that are used for installing software and making system changes so everything in the personal folders is kept private), and the visitors log in with a local Visitor standard account. Everyone can access the public files.  If you want to be more restrictive, you can change the permissions on the OneDrive files.

  1. Copy the Public folder to your OneDrive folder. (Move doesn't work, that would be too easy)
  2. Set Permissions on the OneDrive Public Folder
    1. Right click on the Public folder in your OneDrive folder. Select Properties.
    2. Click the Sharing Tab.
    3. Click Advanced Sharing
    4. Select 'Share this folder' and click Permissions
    5. Select the group Everyone and make the permissions Change and Read. Leave the other options blank and definitely don't check Deny for anything or everyone will be denied access to the folder including you)
    6. Click OK 3 times to close the windows and set the permissions

 3. Open the Public folder in your OneDrive folder and the original Public folder in the Users folder in separate
     windows.

 4. Right click and drag each of the OneDrive\Public subfolders to the corresponding Users\Public folder and
     select Create Shortcut.  I do this for Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Recorded TV (yes I have some)
     and Videos.  There is no real point in doing that for any of the others because users wouldn't be adding to
     them.  If you have created other Public folders, create shortcuts for them as well.

 5. Open each of the Users\Public subfolders and verify that the shortcuts are there and that they work.

 6. Delete the files in each of the Users\Public subfolders except for the shortcut.

 7. You will now save your files to the folder pointed to by the shortcut and they will automatically be saved
     to OneDrive

 8. If at any time in the future you find files in the Users\Public subfolder that you want to back up just drag
     them to the shortcut in the subfolder.

As I said - it is ugly but it works and only needs to be set up one time for each computer.

NOTE: I recommend that you just leave the group Everyone with Change and Read access, but if you
                  only want some users to access the backed up Public files, uncheck all of the boxes for Everyone
                  at step 2, substep 5 above. Be careful.
                  Don't check Deny for anything or everyone will be denied access to the folder including you)

              You can then add others
              1. Click the Add button
              2. Click the Advanced button at the bottom
              3. Click the Find Now button on the right
              4. Select Administrators from the list, then hold down the control key and select each of the users
                  you want to give access, then click OK above the list              5. Click OK again to create the access list
              6. Scroll up and select Administrators and select full control
              7. For each or the others select the name and select only Allow Change and Read so they can add items
                  to the folders
              8. Click OK 3 times to close the windows and set the permissions