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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
Can anyone confirm that you can only sync SharePoint libraries with the new client if you are using the new sharepoint library experience?
When I click on the Sync button in the classic library, the NGSC will open, but ask me to log in to sync. When I enter my credentials, it will say that I am already logged in with that account.
If I click on the Sync button in a SharePoint library with the new experience enabled, it appears to work as designed, where the NGSC will pop up and let me choose which folders to sync.
Is this working as intended? Are we going to be forced to use the new library experience (which doesn't allow users to manage their library alerts after they've been created) to sync using OneDrive?
Michael
- Thats exactly what our experience is, too.
So yes, it looks like you are getting forced into the new library experience.
Don't forget the possible limitations:
I Quote:"
Several features are in the process of being rolled out and may not be available globally yet:
- Support for shared folders
- Support for Mac
- Automatic sync takeover from groove.exe
- Read-only sync of files from read-only libraries, libraries that require check out, or libraries with required columns or metadata"I just tested with a couple end users. Both of which were unable to sync using the new client while using IE - no matter which library experience was activated, or after disabling the activeX control in IE. The only working solution was to sync the library in Firefox (library experience did not matter in this case).
I believe there is fine print in the troubleshooting section for this beta version, explaining this may be the case in Windows 7 & IE...
- stuck in "processing changes". Restarting the client fixes the issue and everything syncs again until it gets stuck again in about an hour. Anyone observing similar behavior. Our machines are all on Windows 10
- Looks like there is a new build (17.3.6673.1011) out of the preview client.
I believe the version that was released after the announcement at Ignite was 17.3.6642.0922.
Have you guys noticed any improvements in the new build when it comes to the "processing changes" issue?
I just upgraded to the new build today and so far it is still syncing files even after the computer have been running for a few hours :)Thanks for pointing out the new build. Just installed. I'll see how it goes the rest of the week.
I gave up on syncing other libraries until this is fixed. However, I'm still seeing the behavior you described. I'm stuck with "processing changes" until I shut it down and restart it. When I click on the ODFB icon it says its up to date, hovering it says "processing changes".
This is true, it seems the processing changes bug is a major issue, have high hopes for this client hope we will have a more stable version soon.
Each time I a make a local file change or add/delete a file locally ODFB gets stuck in processing changes. Quit and restart fixes. Also it seems my team site sync folder is locked and I can not add or modify locally. Little green icon and I now lack permissions even though I am the owner.
My experience so far has been promising except a single crash the very first time i added the libraries the sync client has been working fine so far on all workstations for my tenant.
- You are gutsy to roll that out to a whole network, for now I'm just using it in cases where there's a serious Team Site access issue.
Exactly the same, although it seems to be working fine so far. This has been a major request from my Customers hope we get the final client soon.
The changeover was reasonably easy. Having to stop sync and then re-sync everything was a little annoying but the new client build seems to sync faster than the legacy client, so it's bearable.
I've had the new build crash a few times when adding a new document library to sync, but other than that it's been stable.
Interestingly, the old groove.exe client seems to have been ignoring file type restrictions that were set on the libraries. The new client respects them, so all of a sudden a bunch of Zip files in our group library got flagged.
I also noted that reinstalling/repairing Office on your computer reverts to the non-preview build and lost the ability to sync libraries, so I had to repeat the preview install + reg key steps.
- I've tried it in one new user. They had .jar files. They wouldn't sync. The new Activity window was going kinda psychadelic. Not pleasant. Flashing between a red warning about that and the normal blue progress reporting of the other (100s) of files upload progress. (BTW I was accessing the PC remotely.)
I'm gonna try giving the user customize permissions on the SP site to see if that allows the .jar files to sync.Why are they storing jar files in ODFB? Seems odd to me, but I assume there's a rational explanation.
Im having mixed results with the new client and reg key.
Adding multiple SharePoint Doc Libraries is resulting on OneDrive crashes on some clients.
One client which worked well over days, keeps on crashing after startup.
It had 5 shared OneDrive for Business folders in sync. Once deleted it works well again.
My experience is mixed based upon this.
I know it will be a great addition but right now im not pushing it out in production environments.
Anyone having these same experiences, or getting luck of repairing the issue when multiple SharePoint Doc Libraries are synced?
- Thanks for sharing your experience. Great to know that it's working well.
I must have done something wrong in the process because I am not able to get anything to sync and OneDrive for Business just keep shutting down whenever I try to perform a sync. I'm able to see the Folders I'm trying to sync but there is nothing in them and the OneDrive files I was previously syncing are still there but they won't sync either. Any suggestions?
Did you install and open the new OneDrive client? Even if you don't configure the client prior to syncing, this is a must.
Hi Norman, I might have done something wrong during my setup. Now OneDrive crashes when it tries to load the folders for a OneDrive library. So it does start the sync dialog but crashes when loading the folder structure.
Any ideas on fixing this? Or do I need to wait for an update?
Follow the details on this page. There is a link to download the required reg key there too.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-started-syncing-SharePoint-sites-with-the-new-OneDrive-sync-client-Preview-6de9ede8-5b6e-4503-80b2-6190f3354a88?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
