Odrive is not syncing my files on my laptop (Quickbooks qbw)

Troubleshooting
1

Hi,

I have odrive working on my desktop completely fine, but I did a fresh Windows install on my laptop and now I downloaded the odrive installer on it. Once the installation is finished, the software doesn’t ask me for my amazon cloud drive account, so basically I have my odrive blank.

I already did uninstalled it and installed it several times and nothing works. Please, somebody HELP ME!!!

2

Hi @armontoya,

To better understand the state of odrive in your fresh copy of Windows, would to like to provide us more details on following?

  1. Is odrive app running in your Windows? you can check task manager or odrive tray menu icon in task-bar.
  2. If you haven’t login to odrive app then:
  1. Open odrive tray menu
  2. Click on “Set up odrive”, a welcome screen should appear with option to “Get Started”
  3. Click on “Get Started”, browser will open login page so click on “Sign In with Amazon” as login source.
  4. Complete the login process by providing your ACD credentials, once login flow is completed successfully , move on to next step
  5. Goto odrive tray menu and click on “Open odrirve folder” should list all of your storage links associated with your odrive account.

Please let me know if you are facing a different issue since I think you haven’t login to odrive yet

Thanks,
Asif

3

Hi Asif,

The setup odrive option was not in there. So basically, I went to authorize user and deauthorize my account. in that way, odrive started the setup process again. But now I’m facing another issue. I use odrive basically to keep my Quickbooks (accounting) files synced between my desktop and my laptop. Now if I make a change on my laptop, it does sync with Amazon Cloud drive bout my desktop tries continuously to update the files without success. The same happens when I make a change on my desktop to my laptop.

By the way, I’m using a free account. could be that the issue?

4

Hi @armontoya,

I think sync is failing to apply changes to your file(s) in desktop, It may be due to the reason that file is open in a native editor or app which can prevent files from updating to latest. Can you please confirm that file is not open in any application in your machine where it tries continuously to update without success? Closing the file(s) should work and allow sync to apply the update.

In case, above doesn’t resolve your problem then we need to run some additional tests below:

  1. Add a text file with name “odriveTest.txt” from your desktop into odrive Amazon Cloud Drive storage link folder (machine-A)
  1. Wait, until file upload completes to ACD (machine-A)
  2. Goto your laptop and download the "odriveTest.txt (machine-B)
  3. Edit text file from your desktop (machine-A)
  4. Wait, until file upload completes to ACD (machine-A)
  5. Go back to your laptop and see if update correctly applies to text file "odriveText.txt? or it also fails similar to your other Quickbooks (accounting) files (machine-B)
  6. Send diagnostic report from tray menu, I’ll take a look

Thanks,
Asif

5

Hi Asif,

The file is not open by any other application. Basically the odrive in my laptop is showing me the files on Waiting and after a few seconds it goes to syncing and comes back to waiting over and over again.

6

Can you please run the above “odriveTest.txt” file test and the send diagnostic report from tray menu at completion step #6? It will me a good starting point to investigate the problem.

Thank you for your patience…!

Thanks,
Asif

7

It sync perfectly. I’ve just sent the report

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8

do you have any news for me?

9

Hi @armontoya,

Sorry for the delay, since your odriveTest.txt test ran fine and also I have looked at the logs, it seems like file with name "arm group llc.qbw.TLG " located at C:/Users/Andres/odrive/Amazon Cloud Drive/Company Files/ is opened or locked by another application or service. Each time odrive tries to apply the update it hits an error caused by WindowsError([Error 5] Access is denied. I am not much familiar with how QuickBooks works but I will give it a try and see which process may lock *.TLG file.

Thanks,
Asif

10

ok, also the file arm group llc.qbw is not syncing. Thanks for your help.

11

Hi @armontoya,

Today, I get a chance to install, setup and learn very basics of QuickBooks Enterprise 2016 after spending hours; particularly saving companies files into odrive.

It seems like QuickBooks loosely supports cloud storage because QuickBooks files are always syncing, keeping working files directly into cloud storage app can cause data integrity problems.

I have also discovered, user cannot “Unsync” QuickBooks files having file extension *.qbw and *.tlg due to permission errors comes from OS, this is apart from updating the file. I believe when QuickBooks app is not running QuickBooks services are still running and monitoring the files (e.g. QBCFMonitorService)

2016-06-25_15-59-50.png1276×216 32.8 KB

I would recommend you to work locally on your QuickBooks files and then drop a backup copy of files into odrive for sharing between your machines. I understand this is not an ideal workaround =(

I’ll forward my findings to engineering team, I’ll let you know if they have better suggestion / solution available.

Thanks,
Asif

12

The weird part is that everything was working fine between the desktop and the laptop before the Windows fresh install.

13

Hi,

Can you please tell me which QuickBooks version you were running when everything was working fine in your desktop and QuickBooks version you are currently running after fresh Windows install? are both QB versions the same? I would like to use it for my tests, previously I have used QuickBooks Enterprise 2016 to fetch my findings.

Also, can you please post a snapshot of the file properties by executing the steps below?

  1. Goto C:/Users/Andres/odrive/Amazon Cloud Drive/Company Files/
  1. Select “arm group llc.qbw.TLG” and right-click → Properties.
  2. Take snashot of "General"tab and post here.

Note: Please repeat above steps for “arm group llc.qbw” file and post second snapshot. Do you see “Read-only” attribute checked?

Thanks,
Asif

14

Hi, yes it was on read only on the laptop. I did remove it, hit apply and it sync with no problems with the desktop. But after that, the one on the desktop went to read only too.

15

Hi @armontoya,

Yes, QuickBooks app is changing readonly attribute to checked. Files with readonly attributes cannot be edited or usynced so removing this check should resolved the problem but next time you open the files in QuickBooks app it will again set the read-only attribute.

Just wondering if QB version was different when you have it working fine.

Thanks,
Asif

16

No, it is the same Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions. Recently updated to 16 but I’m having the issue since 15.

17

It appears that Intuit may be trying to prevent syncing these files in this way. There are resources that strongly recommend not putting the raw QBW files into a sync system:
https://community.intuit.com/questions/1018781-does-quickbooks-qbw-file-work-with-dropbox-google-drive-one-drive-etc

https://community.intuit.com/questions/1395572-using-qb-on-one-drive-or-dropbox-why-does-it-not-work

Here is a more in-depth post about the risks: http://longforsuccess.com/advice-for-using-dropbox-sugarsync-or-box-net-with-quickbooks-or-quicken-files/

Essentially, QBW files are databases. They are updated constantly and synced constantly. Quickbooks will continue to write to and access these files as long as it is running. Once you introduce a multi-instance scenario, things can start going sideways really quickly.

I have a feeling that Intuit started write-protecting the files in an effort to prevent remote updates, keeping all changes local to the system instead of updating from the remote source.

Given this information, I would recommend not using qbw files directly out of odrive, but you can use it for storing Quickbook backup files.

18

Yeap, looks like that is the issue now because in the past was working perfectly… I’ll follow your recommendation to use it only for the backups. Thanks to all of you for your cooperation.

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