Best way to resync a folder that hasn't synced in months

July 30, 2018 12:20 PM

I use Microsoft OneDrive to sync folders between my work computer, my home computer, and my laptop. I just noticed that my laptop hasn't been syncing in months. What do I do to fix this, without causing all sorts of headaches?

I don't use my laptop very often, but I've still been occasionally creating new files, editing existing files, deleting old files, etc. on the laptop. It's been about five months since the last successful sync. I'm pretty sure that I can force my laptop to start syncing again, but I'm wondering what's going to happen in the aftermath. I'm concerned that if I force a sync, all hell will break loose.

Not sure what I should do now.

posted by akk2014 to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Best answer: Before you begin, I'd recommend making an offline backup of both your laptop's OneDrive folder and the OneDrive folder from a computer that has been syncing correctly. That way, whatever mess you may get yourself into is recoverable.

From there, you could either force a sync on your laptop, or if you want to go for the gentle touch, you can unlink your laptop from your OneDrive, delete or move the contents of the folder, relink it and let it sync the files it has in the cloud, and then manually update the files that you know are out of date.
posted by Aleyn at 1:00 PM on July 30, 2018