matlab is downloading every files from onedrive
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I had set the onedrive download option to on demand.
But when I navigate directories inside matlab, matlab downloads every files they can find.
It happens in both windows and mac.
1 Comment
Walter Roberson
on 16 Dec 2024
If it were just MATLAB related files that were being downloaded, such as .m and .mlx files, then I would guess that MATLAB is parsing the files and cacheing the parsed results.
Answers (1)
Sreeram
on 18 Dec 2024
I understand that when navigating directories within MATLAB, all files in those directories are being downloaded automatically.
This behaviour occurs because when you navigate directories in MATLAB, it may access or index the files, triggering OneDrive to download them, as Walter mentioned. OneDrive Files On-Demand is designed to download files when they are accessed by applications, even if you have not explicitly opened them, because all files are online only. This ensures that the application can work with the files as needed. More details are available in the following Microsoft documentation:
This may be prevented by turning off the feature for specific directories or files. Right-click on them in the File Explorer and select "Always keep on this device." This will ensure a local copy of the file in the cloud is available, and it will not be downloaded while navigating through the directories.
I hope this helps!
2 Comments
Bruce Wiggins
on 11 Jul 2025
Moved: Walter Roberson
on 11 Jul 2025
This is absolutely a pain and should not be designed behavior (as I've been told on a ticket I raised)! We shouldn't have to keep everything on the device, and I don't own any other software that suffers from this issue. I'm currently waiting for MATLAB to initialise which it refuses to do until it's downloaded all 30000+ files in my MATLAB directory. It's a massive pain and makes it very hard/impossible to navigate using the folders in the MATLAB program.
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