Forum Discussion
OneDrive stuck on "getting in sync" icons
Not sure if this is still an issue for some users but I recently had this happen for one of my clients. I realized after some testing that if I renamed one of the folders showing the "Getting in Sync" status, created a new folder, then copied over all the items from that folder, the issue would subside. When I proceeded to delete the original folder, it prompted me if I wanted to remove a temp system file.
This helped me realize that the folders in question that would not sync all had locked/corrupt temp system files (which are hidden by default) and are not meant to sync with the OneDrive Client. This included temp files for word docs, thumbnail/icon database files, etc.
Moving forward I temporarily changed the folder options as follows (Windows 10):
1. In File Explorer > View Tab > Options (All the way to the right)
2. View Tab
3. Select the radio button for "Show hidden files, folders, and drives"
4. Finally uncheck the box that shows "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"
Once that was done, I could browse through each folder and remove all locked/corrupted temp files and the folder would show as synced after that.
Note: Remember to undo the folder options mentioned above when done.
This may not be the end all solution for everyone but it helped in my situation.
I'm working on fixing this for myself today by John's brute force method. It's important because the glitch is actually preventing me from saving new updates to many documents. I've already lost some updates so it is frustrating and costly.
So far, replacing folders seems to work as long as I am working on the lowest level of folder that is not syncing. I have a lot of files that are broken so this may take a while.
Any answers ? Same problem for many customers.
Kevin, I feel funny as a lawyer answering a tech question. That said, what I know is that OneDrive for Business gets free support from the Office 365 Business concierge service. They swear up and down that the issue is with Windows. In other words, MS internally is having a problem running their main software product (Office 365) on their main operating system (Windows). For some versions of Windows, as updates came out, these would fail in some environments and not others. If you go through you update logs, I'm sure you will find a few failed updates. MS doesn't have an automatic process to address this and Windows just keeps running the best it can. My hypothesis is that if a file hadn't synched when the update ran, that file and the folder it was in presents a problem for OneDrive going forward. I earlier suggested a fix that OneDrive could put in to solve this, but technically I think they are correct that the fault lies with how Windows updates. In any case, since OneDrive does work, you can easily fool the system by manually forcing OneDrive to sync by moving the files into a dummy folder. After that you can delete the empty folder and rename the dummy folder to the name of the original folder. I described this process in an earlier response. The reason I keep writing about this is that I'm trying to shame MS into taking responsibility for this issue. I know that MS employees read these posts. I would have assumed that by now they would have realized just how many customers they've inconvenienced and would have addressed this issue, but, as I said, I'm a lawyer and not a software engineer.
Hello, I resolved the folder icon just by renaming it to "_folder" and renaming it back to "folder". If it can help some people.
- This worked great! Thanks!
