Skip to main content
One Drive for Business synchronisation issues

We had all hoped that the One Drive for Business synchronisation issues were dead and gone with the introduction of the new sync client.

Alas No – There are still issues, and while these are not so serious as before, they still can cost your organisation hours in lost work time and IT support. The main problem seems to arise after a user changes their O365 password. If the user employs multiple devices the password change doesn’t always replicate properly. So, while the machine on which the password change was made may be okay, other devices report synchronisation problems and asks that credentials be entered in order for ODFB to work. Okay so far, but the enter credentials dialogue fails to work (see https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/425024). I suspect that this is because the credential dialogue app does not have sufficient permission to make the changes. And the permission setting may have been reduced in MS security testing.

Microsoft Support still opt for advising customers to opt for the ‘Repair’ function. This will probably fix the issue, but at the same time it will create a duplicate of every file in the library on the local machine. Additionally, it takes an absolute age to complete.

A quick and easy fix attempt is as follows –
1.       Open the Credential Manager Control Panel > User Accounts > Credential Manager
2.       Select ‘Windows Credentials’
3.       Look in the ‘Generic Credentials’ for anything related to MicrosoftOffice15. ODBF resides in
        the  ‘15’ group, anything in the ‘16’ group will tend to be MS Office App related.
4.       Expend the MicrosoftOffice15 items one by one and look for one that holds the users O365
       username (possibly like name@Domain.onmicrosoft.com)
5.       Click edit on this item
6.       Set the password to the same as the new O365 password.
7.       Stop the sync engine by right click on the blue cloud in the sys tray and selecting ‘Exit’.
8.       Wait a few moments for ODFB to start again (if it doesn’t, restart the device).
9.       Right click the blue cloud icon again and select sync now. The sync should now work.

There is no danger in this process as if the credential had been changed before the edit you will simply be resetting it back to what it was. If the process fails you can remove the MicrosoftOffice15 item from Generic Credentials. This will cause ODFB to ask for credentials on restart and it will recreate the entry.

If this still fails resort to the repair option and wait…

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

O365: SharePoint List v Spreadsheet - which is best?

O365: SharePoint List v Spreadsheet - which is best? See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams ,   Invoicing ,  Workflow  and  Bulk Invoicing The image shows the same data displayed in different applications. On the left is the information imported into a SharePoint List and on the right is a table representation in Excel What's The Difference? Let's assume you are running Office 365 and you may even have Teams launched. You need to provide your users with access to a table of data, the sort of thing that has traditionally been circulated in spreadsheet format. Only now, you have SharePoint Lists as well.  So, which is the best way to store, maintain and distribute the data? In both apps you can sort and filter the rows and columns, you can add new columns that read original columns and perform arithmetic, mathematical, statistical and text manipulation on the content of the original. In the SharePoint List linking to other lis...

The New Computer Age: Infrastructure and the cloud

Most business managers don’t know it but this is very close to the truth. IT teams across the world live in day to day hope that their servers and networks hold together and pray that the disaster recovery schemes will be adequate in the event of catastrophe. IT people are highly professional and, of course, their server networks do deliver. Massive and expensive failure is surprisingly rare, provided that the IT department gets what the IT department needs in terms of budget. But, where budget is restricted, where the IT manager fails to make the business case for upgrade, then performance and security start to become threatened. In addition, a complex IT infrastructure brings with it the penalties of restrictive practise where a department head can’t get the software, services or technology required for a lean department because what is needed will not fit with the current IT infrastructure. So, what’s the answer? Sole Trader - Read more SME - Read more En...

Knowledge - The Ultimate Resource

Knowledge – the ultimate resource? I can’t argue with that. As a writer I’m in the business of providing knowledgebase elements. I take my own experience and that of others, I then turn it into some form of written document that may be understood and acted upon by the intended audience. Quote from Wikipedia - Human-readable knowledge bases are designed to allow people to retrieve and use the knowledge they contain, primarily for training purposes. They are commonly used to capture explicit knowledge of an organization, including troubleshooting, articles, white papers, user manuals and others. The primary benefit of such a knowledge base is to provide a means to discover solutions to problems that have known solutions which can be re-applied by others, less experienced in the problem area. · The most important aspect of a knowledge base is the quality of information it contains. The best knowledge bases have carefully written articles that are kept up to date, an excellent information ...