OneDrive - Resolving Sync Issues

To understand sync errors for OneDrive, the OneDrive client will display an icon. This is located in the icon tray (bottom right corner) for Windows, or the menu bar (top right corner) for macOS. The 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 advise not to store EndNote libraries within the sync folder of any service such as OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud. See this 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.

My OneDrive icon has an X mark. I have opened the client and it says I have invalid characters

OneDrive does not support files or folders with characters with the following symbols.

If you're on a Mac

If you're a Mac user, a tool is now available in Self Service to bulk correct filenames that cause sync errors. Unsupported characters will be replaced by a dash or hyphen (-).

1. Open the Self Service app.
2. Go to the Utilities category
3. Click the OneDrive - Remediate Filenames item
   
   
   
   
4. Click Remediate - The Remediate task will process all the files in your OneDrive. It will remove leading and trailing spaces and change unsupported characters to "-" (dash or hyphen). When complete, a report will open to show which files were renamed.
   
   

OneDrive advises "This file is too big to upload"

Make sure that none of your files are larger than 250GB in total size

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

Make sure the file is still not being copied or being used by another background program. If you have checked this and it still say's it is 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.