How do I see when files are added to a shared OneDrive folder?
July 2, 2020 9:29 AM   Subscribe

My colleague has a personal OneDrive hosted on his computer. He has shared some folders with me. How can I see when he's added files to the shared folders?

Apologies for such a boring question.

We used to use Dropbox in my office. It was great. Each day I'd go to the "Events" page and I'd see any files that my coworkers had added to our shared folders.

NOW we've switched to OneDrive, which is awful in so many ways I wont get into here. But my chief concern is, I have no idea when new files are added so I dont know if, say, we got a new insurance policy, or new violations, or whatever, unless my coworker specifically emails me about it.

Short of clicking on every subfolder each day (there are hundreds) and then scanning every file (there are thousands) to see which was added recently, is there any way I can see what files he's added each day? I dont need the pop-up notifications like Dropbox does ("Larry has added a file to marketing!") I just need a list somewhere that I can check daily to see what's new.
posted by silverstatue to Technology (6 answers total)
 
As of late 2016, that information is supposed to be available in the OneDrive Activity Centre, reachable by clicking the OneDrive icon in the system tray. If your installation doesn't have that, it might have been disabled by this method.
posted by flabdablet at 9:58 AM on July 2, 2020


Response by poster: Just to add, I can only access OneDrive through my browser. I'm working remotely for the foreseeable future, so only my personal OneDrive is on my computer. This is the work OneDrive, so I can only see the files by logging into my email and then going to shared files.

God I hate OneDrive.
posted by silverstatue at 10:09 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


See comments and activity on your OneDrive files
If you don't have a file selected and you select Information, you'll see a summary of all the activities that have happened inside your OneDrive. Activities will show for the last 30 days only.
Does that work?
posted by flabdablet at 10:40 AM on July 2, 2020


Response by poster: Nope. When I click on the i for information, its just blank. But I know new files have been added because I can see the recent dates next to them, if I go into an individual subfolder.
posted by silverstatue at 1:03 PM on July 2, 2020


Best answer: God I hate OneDrive.

At this point all I can offer you is confirmation that your hatred is both reasonable and shared.
posted by flabdablet at 4:15 AM on July 3, 2020


Do you have access to Microsoft Power Automate? It used to be called Flow. The have a flow template to get a push notification when a new document is added to OneDrive for business.
posted by willnot at 6:03 PM on July 4, 2020


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