Onedrive status icon folder stuck on Sync Pending in file explorer

Brass Contributor

Onedrive status icon folder stuck on Sync Pending in file explorer.

Tried to delete hidden temp files but icon doesn't change.

 

Any advice? Is this a know bug?

70 Replies
I only see sync problems once in a while... though I use OneDrive quite heavily. I did have a Word doc I was collaborating with a coworker on go suddenly half blank the other day. The versioning feature allowed me to recover the sections that had mysteriously disappeared, but it was a heart stopper for a while there.
The occasional sync failure is disappointing, but for me the system is reliable about 98% of the time.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I did not have an experience with collaborative editing of Word documents, so can't say anything about it. But for me it's important to sync hundreds of gigabytes of text and binary data, and especially using "Files On-Demand" feature. Because there are tons of selective sync software but unfortunately no reliable working software with "Files On-Demand" feature (and on macOS too).

This worked for me too. Disable FOD in the OneDrive Gear (settings). I noticed that the status icon moved from it's unique column to being part of the folder icon. That's fine -- actually better as one icon is easier to view/see.
Ha, who would have thought?

I'm a heavy OneDrive user and this issue happens when I delete and move too many large files at the same time. It happens every quarter when I start moving files from one of my OneDrive accounts to my other corporate One Drive account.  

 

I normally delete and change the file names to correct it. This time, however, I was changing too many GB with OneDrive at the same time at the sync issues are happening at the main folder level and I don't want to use "Disable file on demand" because I have too many GB purposely not on my computer.  But given that I can only change the file name online (I can't change the file folders on my computer), this may be the only way.  I'll post what happens ...

It worked. I just restarted my computer, changed the folder names on my computer (or the online version and restart) and they are all syncing properly. I'll now change the file names back. But thank fully I didn't have to download the files that I don't want to download!
Hey there,

encountered the same problem today. Stop-start sync did not work, shutting down both personal and business Onedrivers did not help either, rebooted several times, no effect. My Onedrive was telling me it was in sync and the folder was created and had only been edited on the device that gave me the problem.
Ultimately solved the problem by following the steps hinted by @engkaram, although all my folders were already showing hidden items. However, newly applying this setting to all folders uncovered a desktop.ini file with a sync pending status that I was able to remove after shutting down OneDrive. One extra reboot and the folder was out of the sync pending state. Hope this helps other users with the same problem.
Well... that was a bit optimistic... It solved the problem with renaming an underlying folder, but not with renaming the parent folder after all...
So, like I read in another post above, by now this also applies to me: this problem drives me nuts! It hat cost me hours already, apparently the bug has existed for over two years already and now the only solution is to unlink en newly setup OneDrive again? #payingcustomer #deeplyannoyed
Somehow, I feel like suggestions by other users are true: this seems like an explorer problem, since Onedrive rightfully tells me it is in sync. As if there is some registry entry blocking the folder
For me this problem (i.e. when using files on demand, some folders incorrectly show sync pending status, though OneDrive shows all up to date, and no hidden/system/temp files are involved) seems to be linked to incomplete search indexing. In my case, indexing seems to have become stuck, and on clearing the search index the sync pending errors were also cleared and, now the index has eventually been rebuilt, sync pending error seems to be staying clear. Fingers crossed.

@KevinVdh 

 

Every week or so I get a comment from this post that reassures me that Microsoft will never ever fix this problem.  I still have stuck sync icons on every onedrive and every PC.  Sad. 

Issue still exists in 2023.
I've just spent hours fixing this issue and hunting for hidden files.
And now I just created a new empty directory and this is stuck with the sync icon.
ITS JUST AN EMPTY DIRECTORY!
When OneDrive gets itself in a mess like this how can we trust it.

@GreenAnt I can confirm the bug has not been addressed in 2023. It is still happening to me too, even on a newly created and empty folder. Unable to rename an empty folder because it is being synced.