Can’t find files on your PC? M365 can help with a single click!

Hey users of Microsoft 365! This write up today is a nifty little hack I use for Windows and Mac to find my files/folders quickly with a single ‘click’. While Mac does have a neat spotlight search, the out-of-the box experience doesn’t see my M365 documents. And perhaps it’s me, but when I am using a Windows pc, I can never find data using the search bar. But with a single click of the button, we can fix that! Here’s how…

1. Login to any team files tab, OneDrive page, or SharePoint site. using the OneDrive to Shortcut button,
2. Select Add shortcut to OneDrive. And that’s it! That will save a local hyperlinked version of the file on your machine and from there, using the search, your file will now reside within the local file system on Mac and or PC. For a full explanation on what this feature is, and other considerations (such as an always offline copy) see Reference section below.

Figure 1. Typical SharePoint Document Library

Results

As you can see on my screenshots below, prior to the sync, the data was non existent. There were no results when I searched for the document, “PTO”. And after the OneDrive shortcut, I am now able to see the data within my start menu.

Figure 2. Before and after with the OneDrive shortcut.

Disclaimer: To be fair to the Windows search, for this specific example, my PTO document wasn’t physically stored on my c drive on the before photo. But that only proves my point! Meaning, M365 and Windows are both Microsoft products. And both of these products are signed in with my corporate email. Why aren’t the documents I work on visible on the start menu by default? Further insult to injury, one can tweak the search bar settings on their Windows machine if they have admin rights. But most of us Windows users, only use this OS on corporately owned devices where we don’t have admin rights. No admin rights are needed for the OneDrive shortcut!

Limitations

• At the time of writing, the OneDrive client app has a limit of 300k for all files and folders. So unfortunately, that means we cannot pull down every single file or folder in our archive. But that is a sizable number to get most of what I want. Rule of thumb, don’t sync everything. Only sync want you are actively working on, or what you actively reference.
• If you have concerns with filling up your hard drive, again this only syncs the hyperlink but there are plenty of options to sync the actual data should there be a need.

Reference

• OneDrive Sync vs SharePoint Shortcut (don’t get screwed there is a difference!) – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sharepoint-sync-vs-one-drive-shortcut-joe-cole/

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