Microsoft is Retiring OneDrive File Fetching
- Paul Thurrott
- Jul 14, 2020
-
14
A Microsoft support document notes that OneDrive users will no longer be able to Fetch files from their PC after July 31, 2020.
“After July 31, 2020, you will no longer be able to fetch files from your PC,” the document explains. “However, you can sync files and folders to OneDrive and then access those files from your web browser or your phone. To automatically sync the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders on your PC, you can turn on OneDrive PC folder backup.”
Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
News of the change comes via Born’s IT and Windows Blog, which I discovered through Neowin. But you can also see a message to this effect by opening OneDrive on the web and navigating to the PCs link.
As Microsoft notes, the OneDrive Fetch files feature allows—sorry, allowed—users to access all their files on a particular PC from another computer by going to the OneDrive website. The interface allowed you to browse a PC’s files remotely, including any network locations that were included in the PC’s libraries or mapped as drives. This feature needed to be enabled, and of course the PC needed to be running for remote file Fetch to work.
Oddly, Fetch only worked on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and not on Windows 8.1 or the Mac.