File error in Excel on Procore Drive

[dirk]

Hello,

I am having issues with opening and altering excel macro enabled files that are stored on Procore Drive.
I can open the file, but when I want to simply copy and paste a sheet or create a new sheet within the file it does not work and I get an error from Excel.

This operation works on Sharepoint or local.

Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?

[Tony]

Hi @dirk,
Thanks for reaching out.

Would you be able to provide a screenshot of the error that you get from Excel?

My initial guess is that the spreadsheet may have other files “linked” to it, and those files may not be downloaded locally. odrive has a progressive mode of syncing, and will only download the files you explicitly ask it to, by default. An easy way to eliminate this possible cause of the error is to sync the entire folder down where this Excel file resides, ensuring that any dependency files are also downloaded.

You can use the right-click->sync option on a folder to perform a recursive sync:

Then set the following options in the sync pop-up:

• Slide the slider all the way to the right for “Everything”.

• Check the “Include Subfolders” checkbox

• Click the big silver sync button

This will go through the structure selected, expand all of the folders, and download all of the files.
More about this feature here: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/sync-your-odrive#sync-all-files-and-subfolders

[dirk]

Hello Tony,

Thanks for your quick response.

All folders that I need have been set to sync and I double checked the subfolder as well, so that is not the issue.

These are the error notifications I receive:

In the folder of the excel file I have mulitple VBxxxx.tmp files., also the one that is not being accessible.

It looks like that VB1999.tmp file is being created once I try to copy the sheet and it cannot be accessed (on time)?

So for every attempt I have a new tmp file that cannot be accessed.

The file has no connections and links.

What do you think can be done here?

[Tony]

Hi @dirk,
Thanks for the additional information!

Can you send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu?

How do I send a diagnostic?

When you send a diagnostic, the odrive desktop client will provide a report to odrive that contains lower-level information that may be necessary to troubleshoot a particular issue. A local report is also generated that you can look at. You can find this report, named “current_odrive_status.txt” in the root of the default odrive folder. To send a diagnostic: On Windows: Open up the odrive tray menu, located in the Windows taskbar Click on “Send diagnostics”, located at the bottom of the me…

Additionally, can you provide the name of the file and path that you are currently seeing this error with This may reveal some additional information.

What is strange is that odrive doesn’t get in the middle of anything once a file is downloaded locally. At that point it is like any other files on your desktop, so there shouldn’t be anything that is interfering with accessing the tmp file that is being created. The only thing I can think of is that this could possibly happen if odrive has the file open for uploading, but odrive ignores .tmp files by default, so shouldn’t even be looking at that file, much less trying to upload it.

Can you try an experiment and exit odrive so that it is no longer running (please send the diagnostic before doing this) and then see if you still encounter the same error?

EDIT
Something else that occurred to me is that there could be a path length issue. It may be that the full path to the tmp file is longer than the VB script can handle. Once the diagnostic is sent I should be able to see if this is a possibility.

[dirk]

Done. The path is projects\4753 - RMH MDR\05. Change Events\00_ Database.

I did send the report. One more thing to note is that this does not just happen in VBA but also when I just want to manually copy a sheet within the file.

I actually just tried this again and now it is working without errors. Saved and closed the file, tried again and error occurred again.

OK, so after trying a couple of things this is what I can tell you:

1. closing odrive does not make a differenc
2. if I open the excel file by right clicking my taskbar symbol and launch the file from my recent list there I do not get any errors and everything works as intended.
3. also other functions, like creating folders within from excel or creating PDF’s is not working, no matter which way the file is being opened and no matter if odrive is open or close.
   (one of these macros would create a subfolder to where the excel is stored and then open that folder. Now it just opens the “my documents” folder without creating any folders as intended - this behavior is not as per vba and if stored outside Odrive folder)

[Tony]

Thanks @dirk! I appreciate all of the details and testing.

To test out the possibility of the path somehow being involved here, can you create a “sync to odrive” folder to your projects folder?

To do this, do the following:

1. Create a new folder C:\projects
2. Right-click on the C:\projects folder and select “sync to odrive”
3. In the browser selection window that pops-up, select the Procore/Halse-Martin Construction Co. Ltd./projects folder

This will create a sync relationship between C:\projects and Procore/Halse-Martin Construction Co. Ltd./projects.

Now navigate to C:\projects\4753 - RMH MDR\05. Change Events\00_ Database and see if you encounter the same issues when working on the file from that path.

You can create a “sync to odrive” folder at any level, but I figured doing it at the projects folders should be sufficient to test.
For more information about the “sync to odrive” feature: https://docs.odrive.com/docs/manage-sync#sync-any-folder-sync-to-odrive

[dirk]

Hello Tony,

I tried this and it seems to work now. Thanks for the workaround.

[Tony]

Great! Thanks for trying that @dirk.

We are using the company name as part of the structure to allow for membership to multiple companies. This seems like it could be causing a couple of potential problems:

• It can make the path much longer which makes it more likely to hit a path length issue on Windows
• Most of these names tend to end with a period (Inc. for example). Windows has issues with folders that have trailing periods so we end up replacing them with a unicode equivalent to allow them to be represented. This could cause some issues for applications that do not handle unicode characters in the path properly.

I am wondering if we should offer an option to represent the company as an ID instead of the name, which would mitigate both of these potential issues.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

[dirk]

Hello Tony,

I think it would be a much better approach. It might make sense to ask users to define company abbreviations instead so that they can still identify the company they are in without having to remember numbers. In my case these could be easy, such as HMC, FHA, TM.

Since Odrive is an option for Procore sync more files might end up being stored on Procore, thus increasing these issues if not addressed.

[Tony]

Hi @dirk,
I just want to let you know that we ended up making a change to always shorten the company name in the Procore path. This is in our latest release:

Desktop Release (03-08-2021) Win v.6892 / Mac v.6997

Hi, odrive users! Our latest desktop sync app release is now available with the following items. Win v.6892 / Mac v.6997 Integration improvements and fixes: Slack: Fix for a Slack API change that affected our integration. At this point, everything should all be working again except that multi-user private conversations are not shown. Procore: Company name shortening: first, trim any spaces in company name. Truncate to 8 characters and remove any trailing period. Procore: other fixes and imp…