TL;DR – a short story of how I broke sync on my Macbook and why it required a full re-sync. Hopefully this helps someone down the line.

Backstory

I’ve been slowly moving all of my uploaded photos and videos to my Macbook for the past week.  For the most part, things were going well until I made a small change with a OneDrive/SharePoint site and shortcut that seemed to break the sync tool to the point of requiring me to re-sync everything fresh.

What Broke?

The sync tool stopped syncing and nothing I did could get it to start again.

How Did this Happen?

Essentially, I deleted a SharePoint site that still has a shortcut in my OneDrive library.  The sync tool picked up that the Shortcuts were no longer working and offered to “remove” the shortcuts for me, so I went for it.

The tool essentially quiet-quit from there.  I quit/re-opened the app, but the sync would never start-up again. 

I then removed the shortcuts via the web app (which I probably should have done in the first place), but the sync app wouldn’t pick up the changes.  That’s when I knew it was truly borked.

Restarting my computer couldn’t even solve the issue.  It took a full re-sync to get back into business, which thankfully went smoothly.

Lesson Learned

Remove shortcuts from the OneDrive web app, not the sync app.

​TL;DR – a short story of how I broke sync on my Macbook and why it required a full re-sync. Hopefully this helps someone down the line. BackstoryI’ve been slowly moving all of my uploaded photos and videos to my Macbook for the past week.  For the most part, things were going well until I made a small change with a OneDrive/SharePoint site and shortcut that seemed to break the sync tool to the point of requiring me to re-sync everything fresh. What Broke?The sync tool stopped syncing and nothing I did could get it to start again. How Did this Happen?Essentially, I deleted a SharePoint site that still has a shortcut in my OneDrive library.  The sync tool picked up that the Shortcuts were no longer working and offered to “remove” the shortcuts for me, so I went for it. The tool essentially quiet-quit from there.  I quit/re-opened the app, but the sync would never start-up again.  I then removed the shortcuts via the web app (which I probably should have done in the first place), but the sync app wouldn’t pick up the changes.  That’s when I knew it was truly borked. Restarting my computer couldn’t even solve the issue.  It took a full re-sync to get back into business, which thankfully went smoothly. Lesson LearnedRemove shortcuts from the OneDrive web app, not the sync app.  Read More

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