Force sync in OneDrive

You don't have to wait for 2 hours before you sync your files - you can (and probably should) restart OneDrive immediately by launching the OneDrive app from your taskbar after you stopped it.

Please note - if you want to ensure that files are in sync both on your desktop and laptop - do this on both of them, starting on the PC where you actually made your latest changes.

On top of that, you can avoid all these manual mouse clicks and automate the initiation of the sync process with a batch file to first stop the OneDrive app and then restart it again, I already posted such solution in this thread, I hope that there is no need to repeat it ad nauseum.

Simply:

1. Right-click on the OneDrive icon in the system tray (bottom right corner of the screen).
2. Click the setting button (Gear Icon)
3. Click Pause Syncing
4. Select a time period. (say 2 hours)
5. Click the Pause button that will appear

OneDrive will begin re-syncing.

I had this happen twice today on two different machines. It took 30 minutes to properly open the files each time. That is incredibly inefficient. When using Office for Mail Merge and Excel as a data file, this is always an issue. One, you cannot use mail merge through the one drive Office. You have to open the main document externally. Then forget it if you change the data source, then you are in the forever loop of incorrect data to merge. Closing, opening, begging it to sync.

As long as you never close anything, it is easier. If the power goes off (yeah yeah yeah, the battery backup is also being wacky), it also does the weird sync pause issues.

We are still begging for a hard sync now button, pretty please.

Forced reconciliation of files kept in two locations can be achieved if you quit OneDrive and then restart it again on both of your computers - then your files will be synchronized.

Quite a lot of clicks have to be performed if you do it manually:

To quit - click OneDrive icon on your taskbar, then click "Help and Settings", then click "Pause syncing", then click "Quit OneDrive" command - and finally in the pop-up dialog box click again "Quit OneDrive" button to confirm it.

To restart - click Search box on the Taskbar, start typing OneDrive - then in the Apps section select OneDrive, and at last that initiates synchronization with the cloud.

To be sure that you have your files in sync on both places - this had to be done on both of them.

To make my life easier and drastically reduce the number of mouse clicks, I wrote the following batch file which I keep on the desktops of my PC and laptop:

cd %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive

OneDrive.exe /shutdown

OneDrive.exe /background

This works for me - hope it will work for you too. Maybe not perfect - but bearable solution

So far I haven't found any way to force a reconciliation. It seems that this is a fundamental requirement when there are copies of filres in two locations.