Forum Discussion
A request for help: SharePoint causing tons of sync problems?
This is likely not the right forum for this kind of question, but given the large number of experts here who seem to know what they are talking about and give tailored advice, I'm hoping someone can lend a hand or at least direct me to another resource that can help me solve all the issues I've been having with Office 365, which I think are probably related to SharePoint/OneDrive for Business syncing.
Warning, there are a lot of issues, so this might get a little long, but I'm going to try to stick with the most pertinent information.
I have two Office 365 accounts, one for work where I'm at a small organization (just me and one other person, no IT support) and a school account. I sync SharePoint sites from both accounts to two computers, one running Windows 10 and Office 2016, another running Windows 7 and Office 2010. Most of my problems are limited to the Win 100 machine.
I'm using the NGSC Build 18.025.0204.0009 to sync files locally to the machine. I rarely access any files via the web browser. Since I've started using Office 2016 and SharePoint together I've had nothing but problems that are mostly related to syncing. An incomplete list:
- Office apps crash on me daily
- Using the attach link button in Outlook to link to a recent "cloud" file that I just saved gives me a "Cannot find this file" error almost every single time
- When I'm working on a file at the same time as another person, but working in different sections, saving the file always automatically creates a copy of the file and won't merge my changes into the document
- I typically open document files to use as a template to create a new file, for things like client agreements and the like. The typical workflow has been to open the file, make changes, and then do a save as to create a new file with the changes, leaving the original intact
- autosave changes this workflow, and while I know the first thing I should do is change the file name, and then make my changes, I don't always remember
- When that happens and I do a save as, I'm given a dialog box asking if I want to save in the copy only, or in both places...but save in the copy only has been greyed out most of the times I've tried it
- No big deal, save in both places and then use the previous versions to restore the original file
- But the previous version will open, but will not allow me to enable editing, giving the helpful "A file error has occurred" error.
- Quite regularly Office documents will report problems saving, and tell me that I'm not connected to the internet, when I definitely am
All of these problems happen with both 365 accounts. I've tried repairing Office and reinstalling the desktop apps as well as the NGSC without any change. For the last few months I've ended up spending hours each week wrestling with Office 365 and trying to fix all the problems that pop up, and I'm just so frustrated, but can't figure out how to solve the problems. Searching the internet for the error messages I'm getting is my normal approach to troubleshooting, but surprisingly I can't find anyone else with the same error messages.
Seeing your NGSC version, I guess that you are also on Windows Insider.
Of course, I cannot say if the issues you are experiencing are actually due to installing Insider builds, but, in general, Insider (aka beta) versions of both Windows and Office should be avoided on production machines.
Also, instead of reusing existing Office documents, you should use Office templates. See for example http://www.techadvisory.org/2014/01/using-office-templates/
Finally, you could disable Autosave completely or only for single files. See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-is-autosave-6d6bd723-ebfd-4e40-b5f6-ae6e8088f7a5
Hope it helps...
24 Replies
More problems. Over the weekend I've been working a lot on a document that I need some colleagues to review before sending to a client today. From the desktop Word I used the send link function to send to my colleagues (one inside the organization and two outside) with the anyone can edit functionality. The send link worked in my testing yesterday, but today none of my colleagues are able to open it, the link opens a new browser tab and works for a long time before eventually timing out.
So now I'm trying to send an old fashioned attachment. Except the file on my computer that should be syncing with SharePoint shows that it has not been modified in days. I do see the file in the recently modified list in Word, but trying to open it puts Word in a not-responding mode for a long time and then I've seen two different error messages.
1) The network is not present or not started
2) The server you are trying to access is using an authentication protocol not supported by this version of Office
I've logged into SPO and can see the file with today's modified date, but I can also not access from there. Trying to open in Desktop Word gave me error #1 again, and trying to access via Word Online gives me "An error has occurred on the server."
I suspect that when I uninstalled and reinstalled the NGSC over the weekend, that the Shaprepoint sites didn't automatically start syncing again to the laptop even though I connected my two Office365 accounts to them, I think that just handles the ODfB parts, and I would have to somehow resync the entire SP libraries manually?
I've seen your link to the production version of Office, and will plan on downloading that later today. But I really want to try to get access to this file first, before doing anything else that might break things more.
At this point, I am afraid that your setup is heavily scrambled.
I would suggest contacting Microsoft support.
(Another approach could be rebuilding the machine from scratch, this time using only production builds of everything.)
For solving the immediate problem, have you tried to download locally (e.g. to the desktop) the file from the web UI and send it from there?
The touchscreen on my laptop has been giving me issues to, so opened up a support ticket for that today and they are requesting I send it back. Likely the laptop will be wiped before I get it back, so that will give me a chance to start fresh. But I haven't been focusing on it, but my older Win 7 computer with Office 2010 is a production build, and also has had many of the same issues with SharePoint. I had originally chalked that up to just being Office 2010 and not having full support for the new features, but now I'm not so sure.
First of all, NGSC 18.025.0204.0009 is an Insider Ring build. Have you considered switching to Production Ring? Insider builds are unstable by their nature, so it is unsurprising to experience glitches and bugs.
Second, which Office version are you running? Are you in Office Insider too, perhaps?
So it will obviously take awhile before I can see if production builds fix any of my issues. While I'm waiting for that, any suggestions on how to roll back a couple of Word files to a previous version and keep the original modified date? As mentioned, clicking on enable editing gives me a generic file error. Copying the data into a new file will lose the modified date, which is pretty important for these files as we need to be able to see when certain changes have been made over multiple year stretches.
Since you are dependent on the modified date value, i would recommend adding a custom date field (as a site column) so that you could control that value, maybe called Issued Date, or something similar. this will help you in the future and help you to ensure that a date you depend on is something that you can control.
Thanks Salvatore, I appreciate the suggestion. I am in the Insider program for Office. I had signed up to test a new feature that had just been released, and also with the hope that the problems that I'd been experiencing, which predate my joining the insider build by a couple of months. But I've now gone in and turned that off.
I hadn't realized that I was also in a non-production build for the NGSC and don't immediately see a way to turn that off from within the client. Is that managed as part of the Office settings, or is there a different place to make adjustments?
