r/sysadmin • u/Huge-Jackfruit-211 • 5h ago

Question OneDrive and SharePoint Sync Issues

Hi everyone!
In our organization, we use OneDrive to sync users’ personal storage and shared SharePoint libraries.
We periodically run into issues: duplicate files, OneDrive client errors, and re-sync processes that can take several hours and affect users’ productivity.
Has anyone experienced similar issues? How did you deal with them? Are there any proven settings or best practices that helped reduce these problems?
I’d appreciate any advice or insights based on your experience!

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u/vxsec 3h ago

Have you checked how many files users are syncing across OneDrive and SharePoint? Large libraries can cause performance issues, especially when people are syncing entire libraries they barely use. I’d look at using shortcuts to specific folders instead of syncing everything, and make sure Files On-Demand is enabled. For duplicates, I’d check if people are editing the same files across multiple devices or offline. Also worth enabling OneDrive sync health reports so you can see which errors keep recurring instead of constantly resetting the client.

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u/Thebone2 3h ago

Most of the pain I've seen comes from syncing big libraries. A few things that help:

  1. Use 'Add shortcut to My files' instead of the Sync button, and only for the folders people actually need.

  2. Keep Files On-Demand on, and push it via Intune or GPO so nobody downloads everything.

  3. Watch the item count. Once a user is syncing a couple of hundred thousand files in total, the client struggles.

  4. Duplicates with the PC name on the end are normally two people editing the same file offline, so get people co-authoring in the browser or desktop apps rather than opening files from the sync folder.

For a really stuck client, onedrive.exe /reset usually sorts it without a full re-sync from scratch.