Google Drive Shortcut File Path Issues

[BryantFlink]

Windows 10 & 11

Google Drive

Version: 60.0.2.0

Our users have been experiencing Google Drive folders shared with them by our "network" account which are turning into shortcuts. These shortcuts are now breaking file paths which our software is referencing to find support files, office template files, printing styles, etc. This is making some of the software unusable unless we repath all the support file locations, needless to say a very tedious task.

Additionally, certain programs we use such as Bluebeam and Microsoft Office programs will not save to locations on Google Drive becuase the file path is too long. Google Drive shortcuts appears to be adding two folder locations, named with many characters, in front of our folder structure on Google Drive. Our users are having to save to their local desktop and then move the file onto google drive, again a tedious extra step when saving many files a day.

Is any one else having these issues?

Regards,

[Ishuff]

I'm having the exact same issue - have you been able to fix the problem?

[RDHEC]

Yes, I started having problems last week when the shortcuts were implemented on my Workspace account and Google Drive. It broke links within Excel files (links to other spreadsheets), CAD files, block files within CAD files, even shared folders assigned to our copier, scanners, scan to email, etc.

I even logged on to Admin Console and changed from only streaming files (G:\ drive) to mirror files. This would supposedly keep all my files in the cloud and return the file structure locally on my computer. But the mirror folders created on my D:\ drive still have the huge shortcut paths and seem to just point back to the G:\ drive (formerly the cloud storage locations)?? Talk about redundant (useless, and a waste of hundreds of gigabytes of storage space).

This has caused me over a week's worth of problems and project delays with no end in sight, and the only workaround is to copy files to the C:\ drive and work there to keep path lengths manageable. (The so-called "shortcuts" added ~84 characters to my file paths, and that doesn't include the folder and file name text!!!) Then if I move a file that has links within it from C:\ to Google Drive afterward for backup/sync, the embedded links are no longer valid anymore.

How this was not foreseen to be a problem for anyone using Google Drive on a Windows machine is beyond me. And we have about 400 GB across 2 accounts affected by this. I'm literally screwed and going to lose clients over this mess...

[gpreddy]

Hi everyone, 
Is this the only post about it? I suspect a lot more people and organizations would be affected? 
I read that we cannot opt out of the Shortcut creation. 

[Matilla]

There are a lot of posts about this on the internet... but there is no perfect solution yet, at least to me. There are some tutorials. I tried them all... nothing works. 😞

[JohnnyL]

In the same boat. We use sketchup for modelling and the associated drafting software (layout). The model get imported into the layout file but since the shortcuts, the sketchup model no longer exist in the original folder.  The most annoying issue is we cannot open ANY file since the file name is too long (due to shortcut names). We therefore have to open google drive through the browser and manually download the file to open it. 

The only work around I've had luck with is by using the mirror drive option, locally storing the files on the computer as opposed to using the file stream option. Obviously, not a great solution if you don't have the hard drive space. 

[RDHEC]

JohnnyL - Look at the properties of a few of your mirrored drive files. The path of each file I checked in my mirrored drive folder (on D:\) shows it to be that of the file in my cloud drive folder (on my G:\ drive)... It's like it is a shortcut to a shortcut, if that makes any sense? I guess that's what they mean by "mirror". But my programs still don't like working with either location in the majority of situations.

[JohnnyL]

Hopefully there is a better fix for this soon. 

Google Drive says you can delete the 'shortcut' if you're the creator of the of the shortcut and it wont delete the original root folder - I'm not game to try this, but it could potentially work as it used to work?

[VonQuito]

Same here. This "feature" completely broke all our shared file paths in the local filesystem and it is a complete mess. Office tools don't like it either. When double-clicking on an .xlsx file in the File Explorer, Excel 2016 will say "sorry, file not found".

Thank you Google!!

[anel]

The only workaround that I was able to find.

Basically, when you look at the file type of the folder that sent you to the shortcut with the path G:\.shortcut-targets-by-id\..., the file type is Shortcut.

Right-click on the folder and choose Open folder location to get to the actual folder whose file type is a File folder. Then copy-paste it to the original path and delete the shortcut folder.

Hope it helps someone.

[RDHEC]

I did a right-click for Properties on my Google Drive folder (now called ".shortcut-targets-by-id")

Type: File folder
Location: G: \
Size: 340 GB (365,790,971,882 bytes)
Size on disk: 340 GB (365,790,971,882 bytes)
Contains: 238,762 Files, 26,588 Folders
Created: Monday, ‎December ‎31, ‎1979, ‏‎7:00:00 PM (not sure how it came up with this date...?)

Just my work folder has 70.3 GB and 114,391 Files, 7,906 Folders. The path to the root Work folder is now comprised of 93 characters. It used to be 16 (e.g., G:\My Drive\Work). And several of my folders beneath that add many, many more characters to that path total - enough to have given me Windows file path errors before this change...

My 2022 PROJECT folder alone takes up 1.85 GB and contains 1,092 files and 145 different folders. 

I don't see how that workaround is remotely viable.

The only option for me is to copy the file locally to a folder on the C:\ drive, get the work done (without the autobackup and recover afforded by Google drive, no less), then "archive" those back to the project file on Google Drive. I also add a Notepad doc to show folder locations on the C:\ so I can remember what I did - otherwise, I wouldn't be able to remember how to recreate in the future (in the event of revisions). 

The last couple of weeks have been, for me, one step forward and 10 steps back. And I have a lot of work piling up.

I went all-in on Google like 20 years ago when MS Outlook hit a memory vapor lock and couldn't read my emails anymore. This is worse.

[VonQuito]

Sadly, that is not an option as it would defeat the sharing concept, our primary motivation for using Google Drive. We have multiple people working on the same files.

[SimonLegrand]

The same thing is happening to us. We also use software such as video editing and 3d software that need to reference 100's of files to a specific path on disk. This update has really made it difficult for us the past week and really makes me wonder if this change was tested at all before being pushed out. This has shaken our trust in Google for our file storage and sharing massively. 

For those of you unable to relink file paths because of the long path issue, try turning on windows long path support (search for "how to enable long path support in windows 10") and you'll get all the info you need.

This does not fix the need to update 100's paths to this new and obscure path, but it at least allows us to relink directly to the new path.

[RDHEC]

Thanks for the long path support recommendation. I wasn't aware of that one. We enabled it last night and will update the paths going forward.

If Google had just broadcast this simple change to us prior to the short cut implementation (or better yet, included a line of code to check and enable it BEFORE the rollout), it might have averted all of this aggravation and made it a non issue. SMH 

[jonathan_tepper]

This change also impacts education with applications that require collaboration through Google Drive's desktop client. For instance, teachers are required to use a software for inspection to demonstrate assessment and evaluation practices in their courses, and now they are forced to use Google's Shared Drive as a workaround.

Although it fixes the link pathway issue, they now need to navigate to TWO places... to maintain privacy of student information, shared drive is used for collaborative files (where they teach with other colleagues), and another for when they teach on their own. 

[NikitP]

For this change Google has already broadcasted message to Gsuite Admins few months back so this beahaviour is surely due to new policy change from Gsuite End. Would recommend here to take Google Support if they can help out.

[Michael153]

I thought I had this issue but turns out the 'shortcut' folders are showing up right down the bottom of the file explorer, try selecting 'shortcut' under 'type' in the file explorer.

Only shortcuts will show up then...good luck

[jmyoung780]

So this is still an issue.  Any reports or anything different?  It's such a huge inconvenience.  Please Google, help us out here.

[DebC]

I think I'm all done with Google Drive. It was my "go to". Recommended to my clients. Dropbox is now my hero. Will be migrating all my clients. This has been going on for too long and without any feedback from Google. They're not listening. I can't waste anymore time on this.