You are on a plane, in a car park or on a site with no signal, you open the folder, all your files are listed - and none of them will open. Nothing is broken. What you are looking at is a list of files that live in the cloud, not on your laptop. OneDrive calls this Files On-Demand, and once you know how to read the icons it stops being a mystery.

What the icons mean

Open File Explorer and look at the small icon in the Status column next to each file name.

• A white cloud outline. Online only. The file name is on your laptop but the contents are not. It needs internet to open. It takes up almost no disk space.
• A white circle with a green tick outline. Available on this device right now, because you opened it recently. It will open offline, but OneDrive is allowed to clear it later if it needs the space.
• A solid green circle with a white tick. Always kept on this device. It will open offline, today and in six months, and OneDrive will never clear it.

Only the solid green circle is a promise.

Try this first: make a folder available offline

1. Do this while you still have internet, ideally the day before you travel. It cannot be done once you are already offline.
2. Open File Explorer and find the folder you will need - the job folder, the client folder, the forms folder.
3. Right-click the folder and choose Always keep on this device. On some versions it sits under OneDrive in the right-click menu.
4. Wait. The icons change from white clouds to solid green circles as each file downloads. A large folder can take a while, so start it before you pack up. Do not shut the laptop until the folder shows the solid green tick.
5. Check your disk space afterwards. In File Explorer, click This PC and look at the bar under the C: drive. If you have marked a lot of folders this way you can fill a small laptop, and a full disk stops sync for everything.

To reverse it later, right-click the same folder and choose Free up space. That removes the local copy but keeps the file safely in the cloud. It does not delete anything.

On a phone or tablet

In the OneDrive app, tap and hold a file or folder, then choose the option to make it available offline. On a phone this is per-file rather than per-folder in some views, so pick the handful of documents you actually need rather than everything.

If that didn’t fix it

Log a ticket if you see any of these:

• The Always keep on this device option is missing from the right-click menu.
• Files stay as white clouds no matter how long you wait - that is usually a sync problem rather than a Files On-Demand one.
• You keep running out of disk space when you mark folders offline. There is a proper answer to this, and it is not deleting things at random.
• You need the same set of folders offline on several laptops. We can set that up centrally instead of everyone doing it by hand.

Why this exists

The shared file store for a whole business is usually far bigger than the disk in any one laptop. Files On-Demand lets you see and search everything while only storing what you actually use. It is a good trade nearly all the time. It is only a problem on the two days a year you have no signal, which is exactly why it pays to know the right-click option before you need it.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.

Not a client yet?

This help centre is free to read and we would rather you fixed it yourself. If it has not worked, or you would rather someone just dealt with it:

The first call is free. Tell us what’s happening and we’ll tell you what we think it is, what fixing it involves, and what it’ll cost — before anything is charged. If it turns out to be a five-minute thing, we’ll usually just sort it out on the call.

Call 03 9028 4358 or email admin@yougrowit.com.au. Melbourne small businesses, Monday to Friday 8:30am–5:30pm. We don’t do home computers.