OneDrive for Business Sync App – Sync Issues Guide

I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve had massive problems with syncing in both OneDrive for Business and OneDrive (Personal). (The branding on this drive me nuts, too, but that’s a different post.)

Yesterday I learned of a page on the Microsoft site that takes you through problem-solving steps to fix (hopefully) your sync issues with OneDrive for Business. I’ve heard from Microsoft that “The highest priority is sync reliability and performance. We need to get this right.” Until they get some of the issues sorted, this trouble-shooting guide may well get you out of the woods.

I ran through the trouble-shooting steps yesterday, which led me to perform all of the steps through “Stop and re-sync your libraries”. Once I’d done that, I saw the glorious green check mark in the image below. I didn’t even know that check mark existed! I’d been stuck with over 500 “sync issues” for months.

I think we should publicize the crap out of that link. While few people should really have to need these steps, they help to solve issues with OneDrive for Business.

Another thing I learned about is how to find out what version of the OneDrive for Business sync client you are running. In case you didn’t know, it’s actually the old Groove client running under the covers. In some cases, automatic updating of the client has been stuck. See the knowledge base article Some versions of the OneDrive desktop app for Windows do not update automatically (KB2990967) for details.

If you want to figure out what your current version of the sync client is, follow these steps:

For OneDrive for Business the sync client filename is groove.exe. Search for this file on your PC.
If you installed Office through an MSI the groove.exe file typically resides in\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15
If you installed Office or the sync client standalone through click-to-run then groove.exe typically resides in \Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\Office15

My Groove.exe file is in the latter location:

Right click on the Groove.exe, go to Properties, and you’ll see the current version under the Details tab:

My version is 15.0.4659.1000 as of this writing, as shown above, because I’ve just updated to the most recent version. You can always check for the latest version of Office on the Microsoft Office 2013 Click-to-Run virtualization page. It will explicitly state in the page “The most recent Click-to-Run release is version 15.X.XXXX.XXXX”.

If you’re running an old version of the sync client and you’re able to do an update, you’ll be in better shape, as improvements are rolling out regularly.

I see great promise for OneDrive (both flavors) as they become more and more integrated into the whole Office story. As my friend Jeff Shuey (@jshuey) is always saying “I want to believe!” Keeping up with the updates for OneDrive can help make that promise a reality.