When the OneDrive client encounters a problem syncing your files, it will display a notification on the OneDrive status icon. This is located in the tray (bottom right corner) for Windows, or the menu bar (top right corner) for macOS. The notification icons and their meanings are as follows:

OneDrive icon	What it means	What you need to do
	OneDrive has an Error	Click the Icon for more information
	OneDrive is currently processing or syncing changes	OneDrive is currently syncing files and or processing changes
	OneDrive sync is paused	Resume the OneDrive sync
	OneDrive is running low on space	Delete any large files or folders to free up storage
	OneDrive is out of space, the account is locked or Frozen	Click the Icon for more information
	OneDrive is not logged in	Sign into OneDrive
Icon Missing	OneDrive is not running	Start OneDrive or Restart your Computer

 

EndNote Libraries

EndNote libraries may cause sync issues. Clarivate, the publisher of EndNote, advise not to store your libraries within the sync folder of any service such as OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud. See Clarivate's EndNote user guide.

Create a folder directly in your main user folder, such as "EndNote" and move your EndNote libraries into there.

You can use EndNote's File > Compress Library feature to create a backup archive which can then be saved into your Documents folder to back it up to OneDrive. Or you can set up an EndNote Online account and sync your library with EndNote's own online service. See: Clarivate: EndNote Online and Deakin: EndNote Online.

OneDrive says my files have invalid characters

OneDrive does not support files or folders which are named using certain characters. These include the following punctuation marks: " * : < > ? / \ |

Leading and trailing spaces in file or folder names also aren't allowed.

This mostly affects Macs, as macOS is more permissive regarding characters in files and folder names. Windows forbids the same characters as OneDrive, while macOS only forbids the ":" character. On Windows, you're already prevented:

For more information about Invalid Characters in OneDrive, see: Restrictions and Limitations in OneDrive and SharePoint.

Resolving invalid characters

When you create or name a file with characters that OneDrive doesn't allow, a notification appears. In this example, a file has been added with a leading space (" ") character, which is allowed by macOS, but not by Windows or OneDrive.

The OneDrive client also shows a blocked status alert.

1. Click the OneDrive icon in the menubar to open the OneDrive status menu and check the issues. Click the blocked issue to see more information.
   
   
   
2. Review the explanation provided.
   
   
   
3. When OneDrive can fix the issue for you, the alert explains how the file names will be changed to replace the invalid characters. Click the Rename button to proceed.
   Note: Only file names are changed. The contents of the files are not altered.
   
   
4. After a few moments, a notification appears to confirm the rename.
   
   
   
5. Click the OneDrive icon in the menubar. The status menu shows that the files were renamed and then successfully synced. The blocked alert disappears.
   

For more info, see: OneDrive can rename files with invalid characters

OneDrive advises "This file is too big to upload"

An individual file cannot be larger than 250GB.

One file will not sync, and the client is telling me it is in use

Make sure the file is not being copied or used by another background program. If you have checked this and it still says it's in use, restart your computer and try again.

OneDrive is syncing all of my folders, but I only need a few folders synced on my computer

You can get tell OneDrive to only sync folders you choose.

1. Open the OneDrive client and navigate to Settings (Windows) or Preferences (macOS)
2. Account tab > Choose folders
   
   
   
   
3. Check and uncheck the folders you want synced
   
   

OneDrive has stopped syncing due to the folder path being too long

The entire decoded file path, including the file name, can't contain more than 400 characters for OneDrive, OneDrive for work or school and SharePoint in Microsoft 365. The limit applies to the combination of the folder path and file name after decoding. 

For example, if the file URL in SharePoint is https://www.deakin.edu.au//sites/marketing/documents/Shared%20Documents/Promotion/Some%20File.xlsx, the limit applies to “sites/marketing/documents/Shared Documents/Promotion/Some File.xlsx.”

In addition to this, each file name cannot be longer then 255 characters due to operating system limitations and the length of your OneDrive folder (c:\users\JohnSmith\OneDrive - Deakin University\... + up to the file name cannot exceed 400 characters

Check this Microsoft article for more information about OneDrive restrictions and limitations.