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My experience with the new OneDrive Team Site Sync
Microsoft announced at Ignite that the new preview OneDrive client would sync full Team Sites, link here: https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/sharepoint-online-sync-preview-headlines-ignite-announcements-for-onedrive/
Shortly after this, I got an email from a CEO of one of my clients threatening to do bad things to me if I didn't make his SharePoint repository easier to access via his desktop, so I decided to pilot the new sync client with him.
After downloading the new sync client and putting in the reg key, be sure to open the new client at least once so the association with the "Sync" button in Team Sites is made, otherwise OneDrive for Business will continue to be the default app when you press Sync.
Once I cleared this hurdle, the Sync button brought up the new client. I was guided through the normal OneDrive wizard of selecting which folders I wanted to sync (useful when you have a 120Gb Team Site). Once done the folders started to fly in to the OneDrive local folder. Some Xs appeared on files and folders with a - (dash), once I renamed them they synced up.
When you go to Settings on the new OneDrive app, it now shows all the different doc libraries you have synced and you can reselect which folders you would like to sync.
Overall the speed and functionality of the new OneDrive app is excellent, and for those long suffering folks with half solutions making doc libraries accessible on desktops, I'd strongly recommend it.
141 Replies
Thank you! this helped.
Maybe this will help or inspire you to help people work with more files in OneDrive.
“Ontolica Fusion CtrlSync” can remotely sync files in and out of multiple OneDrive for Business accounts, FileShares and SharePoint Sites.
It is controlled from a simple SharePoint List called Subscription, where each List Item defines user, source URL/UNC and a target URL/UNC. In this example, target is the URL for the individual users OneDrive account. The source can be anything from an FileShare UNC, URL to some SharePoint Document Library or even another OneDrive account.
The Subscription List Item have several other properties to define the sync specification like: Include subfolders, 1-way/2-way operation, Copy/Move/Delete/Sync, Audit retention period, Expiration date.
It runs as a Windows Service and has full tracking and audit logging both to a SharePoint List as well as to a local database. The setup is customizable and allows for custom rules, for example to set metadata etc.
So, to sum it up, this approach enables you to remotely control file content on multiple users’ OneDrive for Business accounts i.e. “put files there and fetch files”. You can even sync files to specified “In-Box” folders and fetch updates from another “Out-Box” folders and move/copy to a receiving SharePoint Document Libraries or FileShares.
Good news! The new OneDrive Team Site Sync works in Windows Vista, for anyone still cursed with having that OS. Just finished setting up and testing it.
Sorry to bring up an old thread but I am overjoyed to find something that references exactly what I am going through.
I am unable to get the Sync button to consistently access Microsoft OneDrive and stop pulling up ODFB (groove.exe)
Did anyone else have this issue and how did you get it fixed? There doesn't seem to be any reason behind what it opens up. Sometimes groove.exe... sometimes onedrive.exe
Thanks for this thread!
Deleted
Ours disappeared once we flagged both options in SharePoint settings to use the new client.
I've had some very encouraging results with the new client today and hope that this will provide a robust solution for accessing shared SharePoint libaries. From testing so far it seems to create a 2nd copy of a document if it has been edited simultaneously by two users. It looks like it doesn't enable a user on OneDrive to be able to edit files in libaries with check in and check out versioning enabled. Has anyone else found this?
When check out is enabled, those files will get a little lock icon in onedrive and cannot be edited. Even if you uncheck certain folders containing checked out files for syncing, you cannot edit or delete local copys on your pc. They stay read-only.
Currently, checking in or out is not available through the client (only online via web browser).
AKIMF same situation here with checkin and checkout enabled. Tried removing credentials, reinstalling, and the weird thing is that sometimes it allowed me to checkout files locally synced (and locally opened) and other times it didn't.
Does the new client sync other team members over LAN, when in the same network? I'd prefer the same functionality like in dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/help/137 )
other topic:
Despite having office 2016 (latest version click and run), there is no more version history for odfb-files. Anyone experiencing the same problems?
I just finished using the new OneDrive Sync client to upload 75Gb (80,000 files) of network data to two different SharePoint Online team sites. Worked like a charm, and was done in 24 hours!! Here are some things I learned:
*Don't pause the OneDrive sync. It wouldn't unpause correctly and got stuck on processing
*Give the sync client time. It may look like it's doing nothing for 10 minutes, but will start uploading again afterwards
*Sync issues show up in a window, and if you click on the issue it will take you directly to the offending file / folder. Once I corrected the issue, the OneDrive client would sync up the fixed file
*SharePoint has made peace with the ampersand (&) but still really doesn't like the pound sign (#)
Happy syncing!
Hi Norman,
Did you manage to sync sharePoint Team Sites with the New Client ? Could you please share how you did that
thanks
Manoj
As I am not the only person who has successfully synced an Office 365 Group document library. Is anybody else missing the sharing options from Windows Explorer or just me?
I have the 'Share With' option as expected in Windows Explorer. Using the new sync client. Screen shot below:
There is another bug that is causing all sorts of problems and focuses around Excel and being able to edit workbooks. The error seen is "We're having trouble connecting to the server"
This is pretty easy to replicate and the issue appears on most PCs now.
- Navigate to the OneDrive folder on the PC
- Open a Excel spreadsheet
- At the top of the spreadsheet there is a yellow banner to enable editing on the workbook
- Clicking the "Edit workbook" button causes the following error to appear: "We're having trouble connecting to the server. If this keeps happening, contact your help desk"
- From Excel, click on "File" -> "Info"
- Click on "Open File Location"
- The URL listed is incorrect. Althought he majority of the URL is rigth there appears to be an additional level added to it, this level is called "Documents" for example.
The URL provided when clicking "Open File Location" https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/it/Document-Library/Documents/Folder1
The correct URL for the file is: https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/it/Document-Library/Folder1
The OneDrive client appears to be adding "Documents" for some reason.
I have found a workaround for the issue, disabling "Use Office 2016 to sync Office files I open" within the OneDrive client stops this error happening. However this causes more issues as the files appear as local files to Excel. This means that it is now possible for two users to open and edit the same excel file as the same time, normally the second user to open the file would see the "this file is locked for editing...." message.
I do have a called logged with MS but there is no update on when the issue might be fixed only that they have seen the issue from other customers. It would be good if MS could at least give some ball park dates when issues might be solved.
This is good to know. We are moving into SP 2013 hybrid setup with ODB in the cloud and ensuring that the correct sync is running will be important.
Not an ideal experience so far, but I guess that's why it's in Preview. What I've found.
1. I could not get the New sync to take over for document libraries in IE at all. IE 11 Windows 7. I have to use Chrome to initiate a sync or else it reverts to the old sync client.
2. I have not been able to get the tenant name with all the document libraries as folders added to my favorites menu the way OneDrive for Business is. It's buried under C:local\users......
3. I've seen the OneDrive is processing message a lot. Once I see this the only remedy appears to be to log out and log back in. It never finishes processing.
4. I've also see a OneDrive is signing in message for a long period of time. Only a log out and log back in seems to fix it.
5. Both 3 and 4 appear to happen without changes being made to any of libraries I'm syncing. No one else is making any changes. They're just test libraries.
6. I have expereince a few crashes where OneDrive needs to be restrated.
When it works it works well. I assume these little issue will get ironed out before preview ends.
