Forum Discussion
Symlink Directory Perpetually Shows “Sync Pending” Status
- Aug 27, 2025
This is a classic OneDrive vs. network drives/symlinks conflict. OneDrive wasn’t really designed to sync symbolic links pointing to network drives, and even if it worked in the past, updates to OneDrive, Windows, or network paths can break the behavior.
OneDrive primarily syncs local files and folders within its designated folder structure, and it isn't fully optimized to handle symbolic links, especially those referencing network locations.
What you can do:
- Stop using shortcuts or links to your network drive (like symlinks).
- Move your important files to your computer’s local storage (like your Desktop or Documents folder).
- Set up OneDrive to sync that local folder.
- Avoid syncing network drives or shortcuts to network storage.
Simple Tipps:
- Use only folders that are stored directly on your computer for OneDrive to sync reliably.
- If you need access to files on your NAS, copy them to your PC first, then sync with OneDrive.
- If you want your files to be available on all devices, keep a copy in your local OneDrive folder, not on network drives or shortcuts.
Additional:
Check for Problematic Files
- Look for files that might cause sync issues:
- Paths exceeding 400 characters
- Files with invalid characters (<>:"/\|?*)
- Very large files (OneDrive has a 250 GB limit per file)
- Temporarily move these files out of the NAS folder and test if sync completes successfully.
Best Practice Recommendation:
For reliable syncing with OneDrive, it's generally best to keep all synchronized data within the local OneDrive folder and avoid symlinks to network drives. This approach minimizes issues related to updates or path changes and ensures consistent sync behavior.Formularende
My answers are voluntary and without guarantee!
Hope this will help you.
I'm having the same problem, but NONE of my symlinks are pointing to network files. They all point to local files in my local OneDrive folder. I just want to sync the symlink files themselves, not the files the symlinks point to. Those files will be synced separately since they are in the same tree. I have about 85K files in my OneDrive and about 40K of those are symlinks. OneDrive has been syncing for 2 days now and it still says there are 82K files remaining. It's only syncing about 100 files per hour. I'm pretty sure it's the symlinks that are making it go so slow. Before I created all the symlinks, syncing used to be pretty quick. Alternatively, is there a way to tell OneDrive to just ignore symlinks? I only need them in my local OneDrive folder tree and I don't need them online in OneDrive. I'm the only user.
If I don't get a good solution from someone here, I'm going to try writing a program that moves all my symlinks to a temp folder tree outside OneDrive, finish sync'ing the real files, and then move the symlinks back to their original location. But this is risky and I'm worried about corruption. Why didn't Microsoft give us an easy option to ignore symlinks? :-(