On my desktop there is a G-Slide doc. When I try to open it, it says “Sync is still processing. Please try again later.” On G-Drive, it does not show the doc at all. In the O-drive system tray the file is in the “Not Allowed” list.
Other G-Drive files (docs, sheets, slides) in the same G-Drive location are having the same problem too. I can see them on my desktop (Windows Explorer), but cannot open them there, and they are not visible in G-Drive. Microsoft word, excel and .ppt files in that same location are unaffected.
The files are not located in either the Recycle Bin (desktop) or G-Drive trash bin. I have checked both locations.
How do I recover these files so that I can open them?
Hi @sue.mann,
I’m sorry to hear you are having some issues here.
G-Doc files are not “real” files, so odrive can’t really sync them. They are purely cloud files and can only exist in Google (by design). When you “sync” a G-Doc to the desktop, odrive is really just creating a web shortcut to the file on Google.
This means gdoc files can never be uploaded. odrive is also unable to delete gdoc files, as well. If you try, odrive will produce an error and restore the placeholder.
Since these files seem to be “unanchored” to actual files in Google, it sounds like they may have been copied in from somewhere else, which is why they are in “not allowed” and can’t be seen on Google. It is possible these were copied from another linked Google Drive?
If you send a diagnostic I can take a closer look, also:
The G-slide was originally a file copied from another folder. However it was saved down with G-Drive with it’s own name and then had new work done on it. It was working fine through end of February sometime. I presented from it without issues in February.
I have also gone into my G-Suite admin console to restore deleted files in case it was there. It hasn’t appeared after doing that either…
Hi @sue.mann,
Since the diagnostics only shows a short window of time, there is an activity log that may provide more information and allow me to see what interactions odrive had with these files.
You can access the sync activity log from the odrive tray menu (see screenshot):
Once the file is open, “save as” it to your desktop and then send that over to me via a direct message. To do this, click on my name and select “Message” and then use the “upload” icon option to upload it. Alternatively, you could save the sync activity log into odrive and send me a shared link to the file.
Thanks @sue.mann!
I think we need to go back further in the logs to get a better picture. It does seem like these files were copied from somewhere else, at least from odrive’s perspective, but this log only goes back to the 19th.
There should be additional logs in the C:\Users\SusanMann\.odrive\log\ folder. The .odrive folder is normally hidden, so you may need to enable seeing hidden items in order to browse into it.
Sorry for having you jump through these hoops. I just want to make sure I can provide you with the most information possible.
I know you are having trouble with several files, but can you tell me about the gslides one, in particular, just so I have something specific to focus on?
What is the name of the file?
Where is the odrive shortcut to it located right now?
Where was it copied from?
When was the approximate last time you were able to access it?
The Odrive location is odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\2022\202202 CRM for PQ Coaches
I believe as I recall, the file would have originally been copied from odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\2021\202104 CASA Trinity - CRM and it is name there “CRM - Casa Trinity”.
I need to go get some lunch now before I head into an afternoon calls. So I won’t be able to respond until later (after 5pm ET)
Really really appreciating the responsiveness and the help! Hopefully we can get this figured out!
I apologize for the confusion. The folder we are looking for has a period in the beginning of the name .odrive (period + odrive). It will be at C:\Users\SusanMann\.odrive
Thanks @sue.mann,
So here is what I see for the CRM - Casa Trinity.gslides file:
The file was originally in C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202104 CASA Trinity - CRM\
It looks like that folder was copied into C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\2021\ around 20 Mar 12:52:20PM
Since the gdoc files were copied, they couldn’t be uploaded after that copy
The C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202104 CASA Trinity - CRM\ folder was then deleted on 22 Mar 10:36:53AM
This means you should be able to restore the 1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202104 CASA Trinity - CRM folder that was deleted on March 22nd from the Google Drive recycle bin and find several of the missing gdoc files in that folder, once it has been restored.
Can you give that a shot?
EDIT
Whoops, I realized I was not looking at the file you specified… I guess I got sidetracked looking at another location. I will look at the ‘CRM for PQ Coaches’ now, too.
EDIT 2
Okay, it looks like something similar happened for 202202 CRM for PQ Coaches:
This folder was located at C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202202 CRM for PQ Coaches
It looks like this folder was copied into C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\2022\
C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202202 CRM for PQ Coaches was then deleted on the 22nd.
You should be able to recover 1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202202 CRM for PQ Coaches From Google Drive’s recycle bin, as well.
Looking further, it looks like this also happened with C:\Users\SusanMann\odrive\1 Sansu Rising\1 - Workshops - Paid\202103 Child Development Council - CRM
That worked! Bless you! Mystified as to how I managed to do that - as I don’t have any recollection of deleting those folders, and there were shells of the folders still there - only missing any G-drive type file, but with MS Office type files. I’ve long learned errors can be man, method, or machine - and 98% of the time the source of the error is man, not method or machine!
I also think our handling can be improved. There is still some fragility in dealing with Google Docs files because they aren’t “real files”. I am looking at how we can better support them, or at least add some additional safeguards around gdoc operations to either prevent situations like this or better notify users when something is “off”.
Something else I wanted to mention is that we’ve had some releases since the version you are running. You can always grab the latest version from here: Set Up Your odrive
Just exit odrive, download the latest, and install.
