One Drive: Why Automatic Download of whole folder by opening a folder?

[Malleus]

Hi all,
perhaps anybody can help me:
- I'm using One Drive a lot for backup scenarios
- Many folders are in sync with my local hard drive, but the files are only "visible" without being available , there are still in the cloud 
- ( folder option: free used storage)
  -> Only the cloud icon is shown in the MS file explorer ( if you download the file, you will see a green checkmark icon)
- If I now want to move some files into this cloud folder, MultiCommander is trying to download "all the files from the cloud". I'll get a message from Windows: "An App is downloading a file, do you want to cancel "this" file download or block the App.
- So, I have to cancel all file downloads manually or block the App
- But if I block the APP I can't unblock multi commander again. It wont be in the list of the corresponding Windows Setting Screen.
- If I want to open any of these file in the cloud, it won't work anymore. I have to deinstall mc completely and install it again.

So, my question is: Is it possible to stop multi commander to download "all" file in a One Drive folder?
Using Windows File Explorer if I click on a file (which hasn't been downloaded already) to open it, the file will be download first automatically.


A lot of text :-(  Hope it's clear what my problem is.

I want to use multicommander with my One Drive folders, I don't want to download all the files in a folder only by opening this folder in multi commander.

Thanks a lot for all your help/advices.

Frank

[Mathias (Author)]

Im not able to recreate that. If I access a file from onedrive folder that is a only a placeholder folder (fake file that is not synced to local) then Windows will download that file and MC can then access it. That file and not all others.
I have not seen that ALL files is getting download if you only try to access one of them.  I'm not able to recreate that scenario.

Can you create a step by step description on how to trigger it ?

[Malleus]

Hi Mathias,
let's try (and thanks for your fast response):

- I open mc with 2 panels & trees
- Left Panel: C:\temp
- Right Panel: OneDrive\Downloads

- >Right Panel: I click in the tree on folder "Tools"    (OneDrive\Downloads\Tools)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There is a kind of lack of response time, showing all the files with theirs attributes (perhaps this is the rootcause, accessing all the files to get some information about them)

and now the notification appears: "Automatic download of Multi Commander"-> Cancel or Block the Application

Note: I haven't clicked on any item of the Tools-Folder, only clicked on the folder of the tree (right panel)


-> It's reproducible on 2 laptops: One with Windows 10 and the other with Windows 11

Make this sense for you? 

Perhaps the initial folder change triggers a scan of all files and this triggers a download of them

---Thanks for your support"!

P.S. Just verified once more: it seems only "exe" files will be downloaded, "html","Msi","zip" are still not avaiable on my harddisc, only in the cloud

[Mathias (Author)]

Hmm strange
Do you have some none standard columns enabled.. so it need to read the files to show the data for them ?
Attribute column should not cause it to download them, but if you for example have a column showing Image Size. or similar that needs to read the file content to show the data. then it might happen.

Hmm Only exe  hmm Maybe it is when it gets icon for exe file. But there should be check in that the file is a placeholder and not load it then. Hmm I will check..

[Malleus]

Thanks, your idea with the icon could be the rootcause: Initially I only see for some exe-files "white empty" rectangle, a placeholder for the icon(?) and then after some time I see the icons