Sunday, June 2, 2019

Windows 10 Disable Offline files option is disabled

On Windows 10, there is a feature to make mounted network drive contents available when the network is not connected.  Its called Offline Files. This feature is managed by Microsoft Sync Center.  This works by syncing the contents periodically when the network is connected.

Enabling the Offline Files feature

When the network is connected, Right click on the mapped network drive. Select "Always Available". This will activate the Offline Files feature and start the Sync center.
Otherwise, go to Control Panel and select Sync Center.

Disabling the Offline Files feature

Go to the Sync Center. Select Manage Offline Files. Then select Disable Offline Files.

Above functionalities are straight forward. This post is not mainly about that.

Disable Offline Files option itself is Disabled

Recently I tried enabling this feature and found it not useful due to network drive permission issues.

I wanted to disable it as I was not able to access files on mapped drive. It was throwing errors like "Permission Denied" for every file and directory.

But the option to disable it was disabled. I explored a lot on Google and found some methods to disable it on Registry. But even that dint help me. When I restarted my laptop, the registry setting was again rolled back.
My company group policy had some settings because of which I was not able to disable the Offline Files feature.

Solution

Go to Search option and enter "group policy". It will show an option "Edit Group Policy". Select it.

Then on the left hand side, you will find "Computer Configuration" and "User Configuration".

Expand "Computer Configuration". Select "Administrative Settings -> All Settings".

You will see a lot of settings on the right side. In this you have to sort "path" column by clicking on it.

Look for path ending with "Offline Files".

You will see many items for Offline Files. Select the setting "Allow or Disallow Offline Files Feature".

If you have faced above problem, there are high chances that the existing value for this setting is either "Disabled" or "Enabled".
Right click on it and select "Modify". Then select "Not Configured".
Close the window and restart the PC.

Now the option to Disable the offline files feature will get enabled after the reboot.

After disabling the offline files, again reboot the system to see the feature being disabled.