Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#11

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

bananas wrote: post #7

I've just spent a couple of weeks "unclouding" everything due to a number of problems like this. I was using OneDrive (the consumer one) with an Office 365 Home sub for doing basic personal finance spreadsheets and it decided to literally destroy the contents as it was uploaded and downloaded from one computer to another. I can't really trust it. I tried Google Drive before and found it unacceptable that it just leav…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#12

Post by bananas » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

lucio wrote: post #10

bananas wrote: post #7

I've just spent a couple of weeks "unclouding" everything due to a number of problems like this. I was using OneDrive (the consumer one) with an Office 365 Home sub for doing basic personal finance spreadsheets and it decided to literally destroy the contents as it was uploaded and downloaded from one computer to another. I can't really trust it. I tried Google Drive before and found it unacceptable that it just leav…

Try BTSync

I really want less software to manage my stuff so I'll pass on that.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#13

Post by robododo » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 9:51 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #6

IIRC OneDrive for Business is not your average cloud storage but build on top of SharePoint (unlike the normal OneDrive). Therefore this might be some kind of side effect due to way SharePoint handles documents and document versioning. It is definitely unexpected behavior but this might be a reason explaining it without bad intent on Microsoft's side.

"OneDrive for Business" is a branding disaster, as it creates a completely rational link in people's minds that it's the same as OneDrive. In reality, it's a completely different product that acts in different ways.

Sigh.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#14

Post by nickbarnwell » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #6

IIRC OneDrive for Business is not your average cloud storage but build on top of SharePoint (unlike the normal OneDrive). Therefore this might be some kind of side effect due to way SharePoint handles documents and document versioning. It is definitely unexpected behavior but this might be a reason explaining it without bad intent on Microsoft's side.

To expand on that, OneDrive for Business (a product formerly known as: SkyDrive Pro, Live Mesh, Grove Workspace etc.) shares the OneDrive branding (and some? interface components) but otherwise bears little resemblance to its consumer counterpart.

IIRC the Office Org owns the SharePoint client while OneDrive proper is handled by the Windows Services team.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#15

Post by higherpurpose » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

They'll probably blame this one on an "error" again, like how they did when it was found out that Skype was MITM-ing https links, or when Bing was censoring stuff from China globally, and even in English, and in a couple of other cases I don't remember well right now. That seems to be their boilerplate PR response whenever some big privacy infringement happens and many are outraged about it.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#16

Post by nwh » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 10:03 PM UTC

lucio wrote: post #10

bananas wrote: post #7

I've just spent a couple of weeks "unclouding" everything due to a number of problems like this. I was using OneDrive (the consumer one) with an Office 365 Home sub for doing basic personal finance spreadsheets and it decided to literally destroy the contents as it was uploaded and downloaded from one computer to another. I can't really trust it. I tried Google Drive before and found it unacceptable that it just leav…

Try BTSync

Closed source with that sort of application is uncomfortable.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#17

Post by r00fus » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 10:03 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #9

As much as the "new Microsoft" impresses me some parts of the company still seems to believe they can get away with anything. :-/

There is no "new Microsoft". The huge ship has shifted course, visibly, and announced the shift, but that doesn't mean it's completed it's shift, nor does it mean that everyone in the company is completely aligned yet.

While I'm happy that Microsoft is re-aligning with reality, I still don't quite trust them yet. They have a lot of credibility to rebuild.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#18

Post by nwh » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

robododo wrote: post #13

danbruc wrote: post #6

IIRC OneDrive for Business is not your average cloud storage but build on top of SharePoint (unlike the normal OneDrive). Therefore this might be some kind of side effect due to way SharePoint handles documents and document versioning. It is definitely unexpected behavior but this might be a reason explaining it without bad intent on Microsoft's side.

"OneDrive for Business" is a branding disaster, as it creates a completely rational link in people's minds that it's the same as OneDrive. In reality, it's a completely different product that acts in different ways. Sigh.

With no knowledge of either product, that's a fairly sane assumption.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#19

Post by jccooper » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 10:09 PM UTC

It's almost certainly "accidental" and a relic of some indexing or something that Sharepoint is doing to the documents. I'll bet it recognizes XML-ish content (as the article notes, images and plain text are ignored), tosses it in a validator or something similar that "corrects" the file, and saves that file internally. That's not too unusual in the CMS world. The bad part is that the internal version has found its way back out; hopefully in turning SharePoint into "cloud storage" they screwed up and sent the wrong thing. Otherwise, that's rather a mis-feature of SharePoint. If there's anyone here who actually knows it (I only generally do, being on the OSS side of the CMS world) I'd be interested to know.

So I'm ascribing this to incompetence and/or bad judgement rather than malice. But either way, still unacceptable.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#20

Post by ppog » Mon, Apr 21, 2014, 10:09 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #6

IIRC OneDrive for Business is not your average cloud storage but build on top of SharePoint (unlike the normal OneDrive). Therefore this might be some kind of side effect due to way SharePoint handles documents and document versioning. It is definitely unexpected behavior but this might be a reason explaining it without bad intent on Microsoft's side.

...and, indeed, these XML namespaces (MS Office and data types) and the CustomDocumentProperties tag are already known to be added by SharePoint, and apparently for well-established reasons (though not ones I understand not being a SP user): http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/30626/why-is-s...