rclone/docs/content/onedrive.md

title	description	versionIntroduced
Microsoft OneDrive	Rclone docs for Microsoft OneDrive	v1.24

{{< icon "fab fa-windows" >}} Microsoft OneDrive

Paths are specified as remote:path

Paths may be as deep as required, e.g. remote:directory/subdirectory.

Configuration

The initial setup for OneDrive involves getting a token from Microsoft which you need to do in your browser. rclone config walks you through it.

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
r) Rename remote
c) Copy remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
e/n/d/r/c/s/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
[snip]
XX / Microsoft OneDrive
   \ "onedrive"
[snip]
Storage> onedrive
Microsoft App Client Id
Leave blank normally.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
client_id>
Microsoft App Client Secret
Leave blank normally.
Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").
client_secret>
Edit advanced config? (y/n)
y) Yes
n) No
y/n> n
Remote config
Use web browser to automatically authenticate rclone with remote?
 * Say Y if the machine running rclone has a web browser you can use
 * Say N if running rclone on a (remote) machine without web browser access
If not sure try Y. If Y failed, try N.
y) Yes
n) No
y/n> y
If your browser doesn't open automatically go to the following link: http://127.0.0.1:53682/auth
Log in and authorize rclone for access
Waiting for code...
Got code
Choose a number from below, or type in an existing value
 1 / OneDrive Personal or Business
   \ "onedrive"
 2 / Sharepoint site
   \ "sharepoint"
 3 / Type in driveID
   \ "driveid"
 4 / Type in SiteID
   \ "siteid"
 5 / Search a Sharepoint site
   \ "search"
Your choice> 1
Found 1 drives, please select the one you want to use:
0: OneDrive (business) id=b!Eqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm-7mnbvcxzlkjhgfdsapoiuytrewqk
Chose drive to use:> 0
Found drive 'root' of type 'business', URL: https://org-my.sharepoint.com/personal/you/Documents
Is that okay?
y) Yes
n) No
y/n> y
--------------------
[remote]
type = onedrive
token = {"access_token":"youraccesstoken","token_type":"Bearer","refresh_token":"yourrefreshtoken","expiry":"2018-08-26T22:39:52.486512262+08:00"}
drive_id = b!Eqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm-7mnbvcxzlkjhgfdsapoiuytrewqk
drive_type = business
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

See the remote setup docs for how to set it up on a machine with no Internet browser available.

Note that rclone runs a webserver on your local machine to collect the token as returned from Microsoft. This only runs from the moment it opens your browser to the moment you get back the verification code. This is on http://127.0.0.1:53682/ and this it may require you to unblock it temporarily if you are running a host firewall.

Once configured you can then use rclone like this,

List directories in top level of your OneDrive

rclone lsd remote:

List all the files in your OneDrive

rclone ls remote:

To copy a local directory to an OneDrive directory called backup

rclone copy /home/source remote:backup

Getting your own Client ID and Key

rclone uses a default Client ID when talking to OneDrive, unless a custom client_id is specified in the config. The default Client ID and Key are shared by all rclone users when performing requests.

You may choose to create and use your own Client ID, in case the default one does not work well for you. For example, you might see throttling.

Creating Client ID for OneDrive Personal

To create your own Client ID, please follow these steps:

1. Open https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_AAD_RegisteredApps/ApplicationsListBlade and then click New registration.
2. Enter a name for your app, choose account type Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Azure AD directory - Multitenant) and personal Microsoft accounts (e.g. Skype, Xbox), select Web in Redirect URI, then type (do not copy and paste) http://localhost:53682/ and click Register. Copy and keep the Application (client) ID under the app name for later use.
3. Under manage select Certificates & secrets, click New client secret. Enter a description (can be anything) and set Expires to 24 months. Copy and keep that secret Value for later use (you won't be able to see this value afterwards).
4. Under manage select API permissions, click Add a permission and select Microsoft Graph then select delegated permissions.
5. Search and select the following permissions: Files.Read, Files.ReadWrite, Files.Read.All, Files.ReadWrite.All, offline_access, User.Read and Sites.Read.All (if custom access scopes are configured, select the permissions accordingly). Once selected click Add permissions at the bottom.

Now the application is complete. Run rclone config to create or edit a OneDrive remote. Supply the app ID and password as Client ID and Secret, respectively. rclone will walk you through the remaining steps.

The access_scopes option allows you to configure the permissions requested by rclone. See Microsoft Docs for more information about the different scopes.

The Sites.Read.All permission is required if you need to search SharePoint sites when configuring the remote. However, if that permission is not assigned, you need to exclude Sites.Read.All from your access scopes or set disable_site_permission option to true in the advanced options.

Creating Client ID for OneDrive Business

The steps for OneDrive Personal may or may not work for OneDrive Business, depending on the security settings of the organization. A common error is that the publisher of the App is not verified.

You may try to verify you account, or try to limit the App to your organization only, as shown below.

1. Make sure to create the App with your business account.
2. Follow the steps above to create an App. However, we need a different account type here: Accounts in this organizational directory only (*** - Single tenant). Note that you can also change the account type after creating the App.
3. Find the tenant ID of your organization.
4. In the rclone config, set auth_url to https://login.microsoftonline.com/YOUR_TENANT_ID/oauth2/v2.0/authorize.
5. In the rclone config, set token_url to https://login.microsoftonline.com/YOUR_TENANT_ID/oauth2/v2.0/token.

Note: If you have a special region, you may need a different host in step 4 and 5. Here are some hints.

Modification times and hashes

OneDrive allows modification times to be set on objects accurate to 1 second. These will be used to detect whether objects need syncing or not.

OneDrive Personal, OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint Server support QuickXorHash.

Before rclone 1.62 the default hash for Onedrive Personal was SHA1. For rclone 1.62 and above the default for all Onedrive backends is QuickXorHash.

Starting from July 2023 SHA1 support is being phased out in Onedrive Personal in favour of QuickXorHash. If necessary the --onedrive-hash-type flag (or hash_type config option) can be used to select SHA1 during the transition period if this is important your workflow.

For all types of OneDrive you can use the --checksum flag.

--fast-list

This remote supports --fast-list which allows you to use fewer transactions in exchange for more memory. See the rclone docs for more details.

This must be enabled with the --onedrive-delta flag (or delta = true in the config file) as it can cause performance degradation.

It does this by using the delta listing facilities of OneDrive which returns all the files in the remote very efficiently. This is much more efficient than listing directories recursively and is Microsoft's recommended way of reading all the file information from a drive.

This can be useful with rclone mount and rclone rc vfs/refresh recursive=true) to very quickly fill the mount with information about all the files.

The API used for the recursive listing (ListR) only supports listing from the root of the drive. This will become increasingly inefficient the further away you get from the root as rclone will have to discard files outside of the directory you are using.

Some commands (like rclone lsf -R) will use ListR by default - you can turn this off with --disable ListR if you need to.

Restricted filename characters

In addition to the default restricted characters set the following characters are also replaced:

Character	Value	Replacement
"	0x22	＂
*	0x2A	＊
:	0x3A	：
<	0x3C	＜
>	0x3E	＞
?	0x3F	？
\	0x5C	＼
|	0x7C	｜

File names can also not end with the following characters. These only get replaced if they are the last character in the name:

Character	Value	Replacement
SP	0x20	␠
.	0x2E	．

File names can also not begin with the following characters. These only get replaced if they are the first character in the name:

Character	Value	Replacement
SP	0x20	␠
~	0x7E	～

Invalid UTF-8 bytes will also be replaced, as they can't be used in JSON strings.

Deleting files

Any files you delete with rclone will end up in the trash. Microsoft doesn't provide an API to permanently delete files, nor to empty the trash, so you will have to do that with one of Microsoft's apps or via the OneDrive website.

{{< rem autogenerated options start" - DO NOT EDIT - instead edit fs.RegInfo in backend/onedrive/onedrive.go then run make backenddocs" >}}

Standard options

Here are the Standard options specific to onedrive (Microsoft OneDrive).

--onedrive-client-id

OAuth Client Id.

Leave blank normally.

Properties:

• Config: client_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_CLIENT_ID
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-client-secret

OAuth Client Secret.

Leave blank normally.

Properties:

• Config: client_secret
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_CLIENT_SECRET
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-region

Choose national cloud region for OneDrive.

Properties:

• Config: region
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_REGION
• Type: string
• Default: "global"
• Examples:
  • "global"
    • Microsoft Cloud Global
  • "us"
    • Microsoft Cloud for US Government
  • "de"
    • Microsoft Cloud Germany
  • "cn"
    • Azure and Office 365 operated by Vnet Group in China

Advanced options

Here are the Advanced options specific to onedrive (Microsoft OneDrive).

--onedrive-token

OAuth Access Token as a JSON blob.

Properties:

• Config: token
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_TOKEN
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-auth-url

Auth server URL.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Properties:

• Config: auth_url
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_AUTH_URL
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-token-url

Token server url.

Leave blank to use the provider defaults.

Properties:

• Config: token_url
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_TOKEN_URL
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-chunk-size

Chunk size to upload files with - must be multiple of 320k (327,680 bytes).

Above this size files will be chunked - must be multiple of 320k (327,680 bytes) and should not exceed 250M (262,144,000 bytes) else you may encounter "Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.InvalidClientQueryException: The request message is too big." Note that the chunks will be buffered into memory.

Properties:

• Config: chunk_size
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_CHUNK_SIZE
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 10Mi

--onedrive-drive-id

The ID of the drive to use.

Properties:

• Config: drive_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_DRIVE_ID
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-drive-type

The type of the drive (personal | business | documentLibrary).

Properties:

• Config: drive_type
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_DRIVE_TYPE
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-root-folder-id

ID of the root folder.

This isn't normally needed, but in special circumstances you might know the folder ID that you wish to access but not be able to get there through a path traversal.

Properties:

• Config: root_folder_id
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_ROOT_FOLDER_ID
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-access-scopes

Set scopes to be requested by rclone.

Choose or manually enter a custom space separated list with all scopes, that rclone should request.

Properties:

• Config: access_scopes
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_ACCESS_SCOPES
• Type: SpaceSepList
• Default: Files.Read Files.ReadWrite Files.Read.All Files.ReadWrite.All Sites.Read.All offline_access
• Examples:
  • "Files.Read Files.ReadWrite Files.Read.All Files.ReadWrite.All Sites.Read.All offline_access"
    • Read and write access to all resources
  • "Files.Read Files.Read.All Sites.Read.All offline_access"
    • Read only access to all resources
  • "Files.Read Files.ReadWrite Files.Read.All Files.ReadWrite.All offline_access"
    • Read and write access to all resources, without the ability to browse SharePoint sites.
    • Same as if disable_site_permission was set to true

--onedrive-disable-site-permission

Disable the request for Sites.Read.All permission.

If set to true, you will no longer be able to search for a SharePoint site when configuring drive ID, because rclone will not request Sites.Read.All permission. Set it to true if your organization didn't assign Sites.Read.All permission to the application, and your organization disallows users to consent app permission request on their own.

Properties:

• Config: disable_site_permission
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_DISABLE_SITE_PERMISSION
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-expose-onenote-files

Set to make OneNote files show up in directory listings.

By default, rclone will hide OneNote files in directory listings because operations like "Open" and "Update" won't work on them. But this behaviour may also prevent you from deleting them. If you want to delete OneNote files or otherwise want them to show up in directory listing, set this option.

Properties:

• Config: expose_onenote_files
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_EXPOSE_ONENOTE_FILES
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-server-side-across-configs

Deprecated: use --server-side-across-configs instead.

Allow server-side operations (e.g. copy) to work across different onedrive configs.

This will only work if you are copying between two OneDrive Personal drives AND the files to copy are already shared between them. In other cases, rclone will fall back to normal copy (which will be slightly slower).

Properties:

• Config: server_side_across_configs
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_SERVER_SIDE_ACROSS_CONFIGS
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-list-chunk

Size of listing chunk.

Properties:

• Config: list_chunk
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_LIST_CHUNK
• Type: int
• Default: 1000

--onedrive-no-versions

Remove all versions on modifying operations.

Onedrive for business creates versions when rclone uploads new files overwriting an existing one and when it sets the modification time.

These versions take up space out of the quota.

This flag checks for versions after file upload and setting modification time and removes all but the last version.

NB Onedrive personal can't currently delete versions so don't use this flag there.

Properties:

• Config: no_versions
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_NO_VERSIONS
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-link-scope

Set the scope of the links created by the link command.

Properties:

• Config: link_scope
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_LINK_SCOPE
• Type: string
• Default: "anonymous"
• Examples:
  • "anonymous"
    • Anyone with the link has access, without needing to sign in.
    • This may include people outside of your organization.
    • Anonymous link support may be disabled by an administrator.
  • "organization"
    • Anyone signed into your organization (tenant) can use the link to get access.
    • Only available in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

--onedrive-link-type

Set the type of the links created by the link command.

Properties:

• Config: link_type
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_LINK_TYPE
• Type: string
• Default: "view"
• Examples:
  • "view"
    • Creates a read-only link to the item.
  • "edit"
    • Creates a read-write link to the item.
  • "embed"
    • Creates an embeddable link to the item.

--onedrive-link-password

Set the password for links created by the link command.

At the time of writing this only works with OneDrive personal paid accounts.

Properties:

• Config: link_password
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_LINK_PASSWORD
• Type: string
• Required: false

--onedrive-hash-type

Specify the hash in use for the backend.

This specifies the hash type in use. If set to "auto" it will use the default hash which is QuickXorHash.

Before rclone 1.62 an SHA1 hash was used by default for Onedrive Personal. For 1.62 and later the default is to use a QuickXorHash for all onedrive types. If an SHA1 hash is desired then set this option accordingly.

From July 2023 QuickXorHash will be the only available hash for both OneDrive for Business and OneDriver Personal.

This can be set to "none" to not use any hashes.

If the hash requested does not exist on the object, it will be returned as an empty string which is treated as a missing hash by rclone.

Properties:

• Config: hash_type
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_HASH_TYPE
• Type: string
• Default: "auto"
• Examples:
  • "auto"
    • Rclone chooses the best hash
  • "quickxor"
    • QuickXor
  • "sha1"
    • SHA1
  • "sha256"
    • SHA256
  • "crc32"
    • CRC32
  • "none"
    • None - don't use any hashes

--onedrive-av-override

Allows download of files the server thinks has a virus.

The onedrive/sharepoint server may check files uploaded with an Anti Virus checker. If it detects any potential viruses or malware it will block download of the file.

In this case you will see a message like this

server reports this file is infected with a virus - use --onedrive-av-override to download anyway: Infected (name of virus): 403 Forbidden: 

If you are 100% sure you want to download this file anyway then use the --onedrive-av-override flag, or av_override = true in the config file.

Properties:

• Config: av_override
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_AV_OVERRIDE
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-delta

If set rclone will use delta listing to implement recursive listings.

If this flag is set the onedrive backend will advertise ListR support for recursive listings.

Setting this flag speeds up these things greatly:

rclone lsf -R onedrive:
rclone size onedrive:
rclone rc vfs/refresh recursive=true

However the delta listing API only works at the root of the drive. If you use it not at the root then it recurses from the root and discards all the data that is not under the directory you asked for. So it will be correct but may not be very efficient.

This is why this flag is not set as the default.

As a rule of thumb if nearly all of your data is under rclone's root directory (the root/directory in onedrive:root/directory) then using this flag will be be a big performance win. If your data is mostly not under the root then using this flag will be a big performance loss.

It is recommended if you are mounting your onedrive at the root (or near the root when using crypt) and using rclone rc vfs/refresh.

Properties:

• Config: delta
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_DELTA
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--onedrive-metadata-permissions

Control whether permissions should be read or written in metadata.

Reading permissions metadata from files can be done quickly, but it isn't always desirable to set the permissions from the metadata.

Properties:

• Config: metadata_permissions
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_METADATA_PERMISSIONS
• Type: Bits
• Default: off
• Examples:
  • "off"
    • Do not read or write the value
  • "read"
    • Read the value only
  • "write"
    • Write the value only
  • "read,write"
    • Read and Write the value.

--onedrive-encoding

The encoding for the backend.

See the encoding section in the overview for more info.

Properties:

• Config: encoding
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_ENCODING
• Type: Encoding
• Default: Slash,LtGt,DoubleQuote,Colon,Question,Asterisk,Pipe,BackSlash,Del,Ctl,LeftSpace,LeftTilde,RightSpace,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8,Dot

--onedrive-description

Description of the remote

Properties:

• Config: description
• Env Var: RCLONE_ONEDRIVE_DESCRIPTION
• Type: string
• Required: false

Metadata

OneDrive supports System Metadata (not User Metadata, as of this writing) for both files and directories. Much of the metadata is read-only, and there are some differences between OneDrive Personal and Business (see table below for details).

Permissions are also supported, if --onedrive-metadata-permissions is set. The accepted values for --onedrive-metadata-permissions are read, write, read,write, and off (the default). write supports adding new permissions, updating the "role" of existing permissions, and removing permissions. Updating and removing require the Permission ID to be known, so it is recommended to use read,write instead of write if you wish to update/remove permissions.

Permissions are read/written in JSON format using the same schema as the OneDrive API, which differs slightly between OneDrive Personal and Business.

Example for OneDrive Personal:

[
	{
		"id": "1234567890ABC!123",
		"grantedTo": {
			"user": {
				"id": "ryan@contoso.com"
			},
			"application": {},
			"device": {}
		},
		"invitation": {
			"email": "ryan@contoso.com"
		},
		"link": {
			"webUrl": "https://1drv.ms/t/s!1234567890ABC"
		},
		"roles": [
			"read"
		],
		"shareId": "s!1234567890ABC"
	}
]

Example for OneDrive Business:

[
	{
		"id": "48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038",
		"grantedToIdentities": [
			{
				"user": {
					"displayName": "ryan@contoso.com"
				},
				"application": {},
				"device": {}
			}
		],
		"link": {
			"type": "view",
			"scope": "users",
			"webUrl": "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/:w:/t/design/a577ghg9hgh737613bmbjf839026561fmzhsr85ng9f3hjck2t5s"
		},
		"roles": [
			"read"
		],
		"shareId": "u!LKj1lkdlals90j1nlkascl"
	},
	{
		"id": "5D33DD65C6932946",
		"grantedTo": {
			"user": {
				"displayName": "John Doe",
				"id": "efee1b77-fb3b-4f65-99d6-274c11914d12"
			},
			"application": {},
			"device": {}
		},
		"roles": [
			"owner"
		],
		"shareId": "FWxc1lasfdbEAGM5fI7B67aB5ZMPDMmQ11U"
	}
]

To write permissions, pass in a "permissions" metadata key using this same format. The --metadata-mapper tool can be very helpful for this.

When adding permissions, an email address can be provided in the User.ID or DisplayName properties of grantedTo or grantedToIdentities. Alternatively, an ObjectID can be provided in User.ID. At least one valid recipient must be provided in order to add a permission for a user. Creating a Public Link is also supported, if Link.Scope is set to "anonymous".

Example request to add a "read" permission:

[
	{
			"id": "",
			"grantedTo": {
					"user": {},
					"application": {},
					"device": {}
			},
			"grantedToIdentities": [
					{
							"user": {
									"id": "ryan@contoso.com"
							},
							"application": {},
							"device": {}
					}
			],
			"roles": [
					"read"
			]
	}
]

Note that adding a permission can fail if a conflicting permission already exists for the file/folder.

To update an existing permission, include both the Permission ID and the new roles to be assigned. roles is the only property that can be changed.

To remove permissions, pass in a blob containing only the permissions you wish to keep (which can be empty, to remove all.)

Note that both reading and writing permissions requires extra API calls, so if you don't need to read or write permissions it is recommended to omit --onedrive-metadata-permissions.

Metadata and permissions are supported for Folders (directories) as well as Files. Note that setting the mtime or btime on a Folder requires one extra API call on OneDrive Business only.

OneDrive does not currently support User Metadata. When writing metadata, only writeable system properties will be written -- any read-only or unrecognized keys passed in will be ignored.

TIP: to see the metadata and permissions for any file or folder, run:

rclone lsjson remote:path --stat -M --onedrive-metadata-permissions read

Here are the possible system metadata items for the onedrive backend.

Name	Help	Type	Example	Read Only
btime	Time of file birth (creation) with S accuracy (mS for OneDrive Personal).	RFC 3339	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z	N
content-type	The MIME type of the file.	string	text/plain	Y
created-by-display-name	Display name of the user that created the item.	string	John Doe	Y
created-by-id	ID of the user that created the item.	string	48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038	Y
description	A short description of the file. Max 1024 characters. Only supported for OneDrive Personal.	string	Contract for signing	N
id	The unique identifier of the item within OneDrive.	string	01BYE5RZ6QN3ZWBTUFOFD3GSPGOHDJD36K	Y
last-modified-by-display-name	Display name of the user that last modified the item.	string	John Doe	Y
last-modified-by-id	ID of the user that last modified the item.	string	48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038	Y
malware-detected	Whether OneDrive has detected that the item contains malware.	boolean	true	Y
mtime	Time of last modification with S accuracy (mS for OneDrive Personal).	RFC 3339	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z	N
package-type	If present, indicates that this item is a package instead of a folder or file. Packages are treated like files in some contexts and folders in others.	string	oneNote	Y
permissions	Permissions in a JSON dump of OneDrive format. Enable with --onedrive-metadata-permissions. Properties: id, grantedTo, grantedToIdentities, invitation, inheritedFrom, link, roles, shareId	JSON	{}	N
shared-by-id	ID of the user that shared the item (if shared).	string	48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038	Y
shared-owner-id	ID of the owner of the shared item (if shared).	string	48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038	Y
shared-scope	If shared, indicates the scope of how the item is shared: anonymous, organization, or users.	string	users	Y
shared-time	Time when the item was shared, with S accuracy (mS for OneDrive Personal).	RFC 3339	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z	Y
utime	Time of upload with S accuracy (mS for OneDrive Personal).	RFC 3339	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z	Y

See the metadata docs for more info.

{{< rem autogenerated options stop >}}

Limitations

If you don't use rclone for 90 days the refresh token will expire. This will result in authorization problems. This is easy to fix by running the rclone config reconnect remote: command to get a new token and refresh token.

Naming

Note that OneDrive is case insensitive so you can't have a file called "Hello.doc" and one called "hello.doc".

There are quite a few characters that can't be in OneDrive file names. These can't occur on Windows platforms, but on non-Windows platforms they are common. Rclone will map these names to and from an identical looking unicode equivalent. For example if a file has a ? in it will be mapped to ？ instead.

File sizes

The largest allowed file size is 250 GiB for both OneDrive Personal and OneDrive for Business (Updated 13 Jan 2021).

Path length

The entire path, including the file name, must contain fewer than 400 characters for OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. If you are encrypting file and folder names with rclone, you may want to pay attention to this limitation because the encrypted names are typically longer than the original ones.

Number of files

OneDrive seems to be OK with at least 50,000 files in a folder, but at 100,000 rclone will get errors listing the directory like couldn’t list files: UnknownError:. See #2707 for more info.

An official document about the limitations for different types of OneDrive can be found here.

Versions

Every change in a file OneDrive causes the service to create a new version of the file. This counts against a users quota. For example changing the modification time of a file creates a second version, so the file apparently uses twice the space.

For example the copy command is affected by this as rclone copies the file and then afterwards sets the modification time to match the source file which uses another version.

You can use the rclone cleanup command (see below) to remove all old versions.

Or you can set the no_versions parameter to true and rclone will remove versions after operations which create new versions. This takes extra transactions so only enable it if you need it.

Note At the time of writing Onedrive Personal creates versions (but not for setting the modification time) but the API for removing them returns "API not found" so cleanup and no_versions should not be used on Onedrive Personal.

Disabling versioning

Starting October 2018, users will no longer be able to disable versioning by default. This is because Microsoft has brought an update to the mechanism. To change this new default setting, a PowerShell command is required to be run by a SharePoint admin. If you are an admin, you can run these commands in PowerShell to change that setting:

1. Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell (in case you haven't installed this already)
2. Import-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -DisableNameChecking
3. Connect-SPOService -Url https://YOURSITE-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential YOU@YOURSITE.COM (replacing YOURSITE, YOU, YOURSITE.COM with the actual values; this will prompt for your credentials)
4. Set-SPOTenant -EnableMinimumVersionRequirement $False
5. Disconnect-SPOService (to disconnect from the server)

Below are the steps for normal users to disable versioning. If you don't see the "No Versioning" option, make sure the above requirements are met.

User Weropol has found a method to disable versioning on OneDrive

1. Open the settings menu by clicking on the gear symbol at the top of the OneDrive Business page.
2. Click Site settings.
3. Once on the Site settings page, navigate to Site Administration > Site libraries and lists.
4. Click Customize "Documents".
5. Click General Settings > Versioning Settings.
6. Under Document Version History select the option No versioning. Note: This will disable the creation of new file versions, but will not remove any previous versions. Your documents are safe.
7. Apply the changes by clicking OK.
8. Use rclone to upload or modify files. (I also use the --no-update-modtime flag)
9. Restore the versioning settings after using rclone. (Optional)

Cleanup

OneDrive supports rclone cleanup which causes rclone to look through every file under the path supplied and delete all version but the current version. Because this involves traversing all the files, then querying each file for versions it can be quite slow. Rclone does --checkers tests in parallel. The command also supports --interactive/i or --dry-run which is a great way to see what it would do.

rclone cleanup --interactive remote:path/subdir # interactively remove all old version for path/subdir
rclone cleanup remote:path/subdir               # unconditionally remove all old version for path/subdir

NB Onedrive personal can't currently delete versions

Troubleshooting

Excessive throttling or blocked on SharePoint

If you experience excessive throttling or is being blocked on SharePoint then it may help to set the user agent explicitly with a flag like this: --user-agent "ISV|rclone.org|rclone/v1.55.1"

The specific details can be found in the Microsoft document: Avoid getting throttled or blocked in SharePoint Online

Unexpected file size/hash differences on Sharepoint

It is a known issue that Sharepoint (not OneDrive or OneDrive for Business) silently modifies uploaded files, mainly Office files (.docx, .xlsx, etc.), causing file size and hash checks to fail. There are also other situations that will cause OneDrive to report inconsistent file sizes. To use rclone with such affected files on Sharepoint, you may disable these checks with the following command line arguments:

--ignore-checksum --ignore-size

Alternatively, if you have write access to the OneDrive files, it may be possible to fix this problem for certain files, by attempting the steps below. Open the web interface for OneDrive and find the affected files (which will be in the error messages/log for rclone). Simply click on each of these files, causing OneDrive to open them on the web. This will cause each file to be converted in place to a format that is functionally equivalent but which will no longer trigger the size discrepancy. Once all problematic files are converted you will no longer need the ignore options above.

Replacing/deleting existing files on Sharepoint gets "item not found"

It is a known issue that Sharepoint (not OneDrive or OneDrive for Business) may return "item not found" errors when users try to replace or delete uploaded files; this seems to mainly affect Office files (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) and web files (.html, .aspx, etc.). As a workaround, you may use the --backup-dir <BACKUP_DIR> command line argument so rclone moves the files to be replaced/deleted into a given backup directory (instead of directly replacing/deleting them). For example, to instruct rclone to move the files into the directory rclone-backup-dir on backend mysharepoint, you may use:

--backup-dir mysharepoint:rclone-backup-dir

access_denied (AADSTS65005)

Error: access_denied
Code: AADSTS65005
Description: Using application 'rclone' is currently not supported for your organization [YOUR_ORGANIZATION] because it is in an unmanaged state. An administrator needs to claim ownership of the company by DNS validation of [YOUR_ORGANIZATION] before the application rclone can be provisioned.

This means that rclone can't use the OneDrive for Business API with your account. You can't do much about it, maybe write an email to your admins.

However, there are other ways to interact with your OneDrive account. Have a look at the WebDAV backend: https://rclone.org/webdav/#sharepoint

invalid_grant (AADSTS50076)

Error: invalid_grant
Code: AADSTS50076
Description: Due to a configuration change made by your administrator, or because you moved to a new location, you must use multi-factor authentication to access '...'.

If you see the error above after enabling multi-factor authentication for your account, you can fix it by refreshing your OAuth refresh token. To do that, run rclone config, and choose to edit your OneDrive backend. Then, you don't need to actually make any changes until you reach this question: Already have a token - refresh?. For this question, answer y and go through the process to refresh your token, just like the first time the backend is configured. After this, rclone should work again for this backend.

Invalid request when making public links

On Sharepoint and OneDrive for Business, rclone link may return an "Invalid request" error. A possible cause is that the organisation admin didn't allow public links to be made for the organisation/sharepoint library. To fix the permissions as an admin, take a look at the docs: 1, 2.

Can not access Shared with me files

Shared with me files is not supported by rclone currently, but there is a workaround:

1. Visit https://onedrive.live.com
2. Right click a item in Shared, then click Add shortcut to My files in the context
3. The shortcut will appear in My files, you can access it with rclone, it behaves like a normal folder/file.

Live Photos uploaded from iOS (small video clips in .heic files)

The iOS OneDrive app introduced upload and storage of Live Photos in 2020. The usage and download of these uploaded Live Photos is unfortunately still work-in-progress and this introduces several issues when copying, synchronising and mounting – both in rclone and in the native OneDrive client on Windows.

The root cause can easily be seen if you locate one of your Live Photos in the OneDrive web interface. Then download the photo from the web interface. You will then see that the size of downloaded .heic file is smaller than the size displayed in the web interface. The downloaded file is smaller because it only contains a single frame (still photo) extracted from the Live Photo (movie) stored in OneDrive.

The different sizes will cause rclone copy/sync to repeatedly recopy unmodified photos something like this:

DEBUG : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: Sizes differ (src 4470314 vs dst 1298667)
DEBUG : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: sha1 = fc2edde7863b7a7c93ca6771498ac797f8460750 OK
INFO  : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: Copied (replaced existing)

These recopies can be worked around by adding --ignore-size. Please note that this workaround only syncs the still-picture not the movie clip, and relies on modification dates being correctly updated on all files in all situations.

The different sizes will also cause rclone check to report size errors something like this:

ERROR : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: sizes differ

These check errors can be suppressed by adding --ignore-size.

The different sizes will also cause rclone mount to fail downloading with an error something like this:

ERROR : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: ReadFileHandle.Read error: low level retry 1/10: unexpected EOF

or like this when using --cache-mode=full:

INFO  : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: vfs cache: downloader: error count now 1: vfs reader: failed to write to cache file: 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable:
ERROR : 20230203_123826234_iOS.heic: vfs cache: failed to download: vfs reader: failed to write to cache file: 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable: