Perpetually 'waiting' files

Troubleshooting
1

Pasted image988×441 357 KB

I had 7 in my OneDrive folder waiting to sync for and have been for a number of days. I was able to get them to sync by renaming them, allowing them to sync, then returning their name to the original name.

I thought maybe the commas in the filename or the length of the filenames might be the problem, but since they sync even after I return their filenames to what they were originally, apparently it isn’t a problem.

From drive letter to filename, the total length of the path is (for one file) ~220 characters. Looks like OneDrive should be able to support 430 characters, so I don’t think that should be the issue.

Sample path:
/Users/ahakso/odrive/OneDrive/AcademicDocs/Mendeley\ Papers/Lacazette\ Engelder\ -\ 1992\ -\ Chapter\ 12\ Fluid-driven\ Cyclic\ Propagation\ of\ a\ Joint\ in\ the\ Ithaca\ Siltstone\ Appalachian\ Basin\ New\ York.pdf

Why didn’t these sync by themselves? Is there a way for me to see why odrive wasn’t syncing them before I messed with their filenames? Is there a better way I could have resolved this had there been a larger number of files?

2

Hi,
I took a look at this and OneDrive seems to have a character limit, but it is not deterministic. I can’t quite pinpoint what the restriction is. I’m still looking into it.

3

Hm. Yeah when I look into forbidden characters and other filename limitations it varies a ton across MS products, operating systems, versions etc.

Does odrive have more information from the MS API about why the file is still waiting to sync than it is giving me? It would great to get some specific error reporting for these types of issues.

4

We looked into it more and we don’t understand why, but OneDrive is imposing a 136 character limit on filenames at the root of OneDrive and 135 characters anywhere else… :confused:

The error they are giving us back is a generic invalid request exception. I’ll see if I can get some explanation out of them. This doesn’t seem to be a systemic issue, as their webclient doesn’t exhibit the same behavior. It seems localized to their API implementation.

5

Interesting. Thanks for looking into it Tony.