There's a quiet betrayal happening inside Microsoft 365, and it's the kind that erodes trust one click at a time. When a user selects "Open File Location" from the Info menu, they expect the file explorer to surface the folder containing their document. Instead, that user gets a browser window pointed at MSN. That's not a feature. That's a malfunction dressed up as a default behavior, and it's happening to people with perfectly standard network configurations.
The report from u/p107r0 is not an isolated tantrum about a minor quirk. It's a symptom of something deeper: the slow erosion of local-first workflows in favor of cloud-driven assumptions. The command in question is supposed to be a simple bridge between the document you're editing and the folder where it lives. When that bridge leads to a news portal, the application is no longer serving the user. It's serving an advertising ecosystem. The fact that the workaround advice from search results focuses on disabling cloud files or tweaking Explorer settings only reinforces how little visibility anyone has into what Microsoft's own code is doing under the hood.
What makes this frustrating is not the existence of a bug. Bugs happen. It's the silence and the misdirection. The user's configuration hasn't changed. Their network hasn't changed. Yet the behavior changed, and the usual remedies do nothing. That points to a regression introduced somewhere in the update pipeline, likely tied to how Microsoft 365 now handles network paths or file provenance metadata. For the person living this, it means lost time, broken focus, and a creeping sense that the tool they rely on is no longer fully theirs. It's not about being unable to find a folder. It's about the application deciding that a web redirect is an acceptable substitute for a file system operation.
Here's the practical takeaway: if you depend on "Open File Location" for network files, you are currently at the mercy of a silent policy shift. The fix is not to keep clicking through menus or hunting for obscure registry keys. It's to demand clarity from Microsoft about why a local command is being routed through a browser at all. File location is not a recommendation engine. It's a navigation aid. Until the company restores that distinction, users should treat any unexpected browser launch as a red flag, not a convenience. And if you hit this issue, report it through official channels, not just a forum. Because right now, the only thing standing between a productive workflow and an MSN tab is a developer's understanding of what "open" actually means.