OneDrive for Business restrictions

OneDrive for Business and SharePoint in Microsoft 365 have certain restrictions related to files, folders, drives, synchronization, and more. In this page, we will discuss about nine major restrictions that applies to OneDrive for Business (applies to Microsoft OneDrive for home and OneDrive for work or school also), and how M365 Manager Plus helps you keep track of all OneDrive for Business activities by providing comprehensive reports.

List of OneDrive restrictions

1. Certain characters or symbols that have special meanings cannot be used while naming a file or folder. For example * means wildcard and \ is used to denote paths. In general, " * : < > ? / \ | characters and leading or trailing spaces must be avoided.
2. Certain file name extensions and terms like .lock, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM0 - COM9, LPT0 - LPT9, _vti_, desktop.ini and ~$ cannot be a part of the file and folder name.
3. The TMP (temporary) files and desktop.ini files used by your local computer will not be synced to OneDrive. The sync status will either remain as Sync Pending, or if the files do get synced during migration, the sync app will delete the cloud copy and retain the local one alone. In addition to the TMP and desktop.ini files, there can also be some invalid or blocked file types, based on administrative settings, that will not be synced.
4. A network or mapped drive cannot be declared as a OneDrive Sync location as it does not support symbolic links and junction points for syncing.
5. Elevated privileges are not supported in OneDrive client machines. OneDrive cannot be run properly with full administrative privileges, and in some cases you will not be able to access the OneDrive menu items within File Explorer. You should uncheck the Run with highest privileges option in the Task Scheduler Library to have hassle free access.
6. The Shared with me group of files in OneDrive for work or school sites cannot be synchronized.
7. The restriction for syncing include the number of sign-ins and syncs in a device. There can only be a maximum of 1 OneDrive for home account and 9 OneDrive for work or school accounts. Syncing accounts using an external or guest account is not possible.
8. OneDrive does not support authenticated proxies (proxies that block requests for content until the valid credentials can be fetched from the local database, or by prompting the user).
9. OneDrive and OneNote have separate syncing mechanisms. You cannot move an existing notebook from OneNote into a currently synced OneDrive folder directly. The notebooks can only be accessed as a stub .url file.

So, managing and handling OneDrive for Business can sometimes be really tricky. Keeping track of OneDrive activities are even more difficult. That’s where M365 Manager Plus can help.

About M365 Manager Plus

M365 Manager Plus, an intuitive Microsoft 365 reporting, management, monitoring, auditing, and alerting tool, helps you get reports on all OneDrive for Business file, folder changes and audits all user activities. Apart from this, the tool helps you monitor other features and end-points (like CDNs and supportability). You can get information on all the important aspects related to OneDrive for Business by generating the reports as given below.

Steps to get OneDrive for Business report

1. Go to the Management & Reporting section.
2. Click the Reports tab.
3. Navigate to Other Services > OneDrive for Business Reports.
4. Choose a suitable category and report from the list of options available.
5. Enter the Microsoft 365 Tenant and period for report generation.
6. Click on Generate Now.

That’s it. You can instantly get all the required information in a systematic and easy-to-analyze format. You can export the reports as PDF, CSV, HTML or XLSX files and even schedule them to be generated automatically and emailed to the technicians as and when required.

Highlights of M365 Manager Plus

• 700+ pre-configured reports and unique custom reports.
• Geo-location enabled reports.
• Bulk users and mailbox management.
• Customizable templates to manage users, groups and contacts.
• Rules to auto-populate fields.
• Custom naming formats and password policies for the templates.
• Automation of management tasks.
• Virtual tenants creation and delegation.
• Custom help desk roles to delegate management and reporting operations to technicians without elevating their rights in native environment.

To know more about the tips and tricks that make your Microsoft 365 tasks easy, click here.