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Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

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Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#71

Post by polemic »

jccooper wrote: post #19

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 w…

Sure, but as a cloud sync product it's a "you had one job" situation. Not so much incompetence as a fundamental failure to achieve that basic requirement.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#72

Post by edmccard »

It's not that OneDrive is modifying files "as it syncs"; it's that it involves Sharepoint, which adds certain metadata to documents that it handles, and has probably always done so; here's a stackoverflow question about it from 2010:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2762841/how-can-i-stop-sh...

EDIT: I see that 'ppog has already mentioned this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7624293

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#73

Post by varkson »

higherpurpose wrote: post #15

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.

>Bing was censoring stuff from China globally

That's not a privacy infringement, that just sounds like production code went up to the wrong server.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#74

Post by varkson »

marshray wrote: post #49
higherpurpose wrote: post #15

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.

I'm interested if you have a cite for MITMing hyperlinks. The only thing I see sounds attributable to old fashioned cookies and ad networks.

I'm pretty sure this user is referencing the link checking bot news that came out mid last year. Basically, a Skype bot HEADs links placed in messages. It's hard to say why, maybe it checks for 404ed links.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#75

Post by [deleted] »

borrowedtime wrote: post #36
higherpurpose wrote: post #15

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.

Yea, but of course the microsoft happy bunnies will go on defending them like the morons they are.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#76

Post by jmnicolas »

w124me wrote: post #69

Microsoft is not the only one. I had saved a special PDF with settings to full screen the PDF on open. I uploaded this to my Google Drive to transfer it to another machine and it completely reconverted the file into another type of PDF which not only corrupted the document but also broke the full screen open setting. This is a really random circumstance, but I was surprised to see GD reconvert the PDF, not store what…

The full screen bit might has been seen as malware and was "sanitized" by their anti-virus.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#77

Post by nl »

kenjackson wrote: post #50
kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

When we do that, we lose control of the documents, we can't get at the history, we can't search them, we can't even find stuff in there, Except SharePoint does store history and you can search it. And no need to create a second Beta1 and Beta2 folder when you can just mark documents as release = Beta1 or release = Beta2.

Sharepoint has every possible feature, in the sense it exists on a product information sheet. But every possible feature is implemented in such a terrible way that actually using it is more trouble than just about any alternative, including the "rename file to include version number and then email it around" method.

Will someone please kill sharepoint already?

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#78

Post by mrslx »

kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

So your PM doesn't manage the docs? as in talk to you about what the appropriate output should be and then they collect and handle the organization of it?

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#79

Post by Maarten88 »

skrebbel wrote: post #65
kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

Your comment is witty, but I have absolutely no idea what it has to do with OneDrive modifying files. It's not even about Microsoft or the effects of any of their choices or policies - it's about stupid managers.

> ... I have absolutely no idea what it has to do with OneDrive modifying files

The article is about Onedrive for Business. Which is nothing more than a Sharepoint Document Library in the users MySite. And that is probably also the cause of the behaviour that the autor is describing: there's probably some workflow or other weird SharePoint feature at work, that was installed or activated unknowingly.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#80

Post by frik »

kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

I wonder if SharePoint has a future in Microsoft's strategy re-alignment.

SharePoint (evolved as Office Server) is a beast of software and many awkward engineering & design choices from the 2003 era are still visible to the end user. And I am not even touching the XHTML tabled based layout with thousands of CSS rules, Silverlight & ActiveX controls, bad WebDAV support, "SharePoint Groups", low soft & hard limits for file size, file count in folders, etc.

It has of course also it good values for companies. Like the Office integration, the Office ribbon UI and some document management options that are missing from Windows Explorer thanks to the failed attempt to release WinFS in the Longhorn era.

Microsoft also discontinued InfoPath, the WYSIWYG form designer that is part of Office 2003-2013 and the InfoPath form services hosted on top of SharePoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_InfoPath

Will Microsoft rewrite (or refactor) SharePoint and its form services from the ground up? Or will SharePoint 2015(?) be a rehashed v2013? And will Windows 9 come with an improved Explorer and NTFS/ReFS with better document management capabilities like that were planned for WinFS or "Microsoft Semantic Engine"?

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