Resolving the infamous "not allowed" error

Hi, I recently made the mistake of moving a local folder on my Mac that was tied to one google drive account to another folder that was tied to a different google drive account. The original folder contained some gsheets and google docs files that are now hung up in the not allowed list in odrive. Slightly more than 200 of them to be precise.

To further exacerbate matters, I already deleted the original folder on my local drive, so there is no going back. I did manage to get everything I wanted over to the new google drive folder, and I’ve confirmed all of the data is there.

Sooo, how do I clear the not allowed list now? I’ve reviewed a couple of the other posts about this, but I think my situation is slightly different because the source files are no longer there.

Hi @matt.nye,
Hopefully I am understanding the scenario properly, but I think you should just be able to delete those google files on your local system, so that odrive doesn’t see them anymore. Once odrive processes that change, it will remove them from the not allowed list.

Hello, Tony, you are not. As stated, the original local files (google files included) I moved from one place to another on the local drive are already gone. That is why I posted. I cannot find any way to get rid of the sync error on the odrive side. The instructions I’ve seen posted previously do not address the issue. I’m also having other issues with regular files not syncing, and odrive not responding, even though it shows in toolbar (I’m using a Mac). I’ve been a client forever, but I’m about to pull the plug if I can’t get this resolved.

Hi @matt.nye,
Thanks for the reply.

Let’s try the following steps:
1
Make sure you are on the latest version, as this will have the best diagnostics abilities for troubleshooting. To update to the latest version:

  • Exit odrive from the odrive tray menu
  • Download the latest version from here: Set Up Your odrive
  • Install

2
After updating, wait about an hour to make sure everything is initialized and scanned and then send a diagnostic from the odrive tray menu.

See this post for instructions on sending a diagnostic:


3
Just let me know when you’ve gone through the steps above. I can take a look at the diagnostic and should be able to quickly help you get any issues resolved.

Thanks Tony. Diagnostic just sent.

Hi @matt.nye,
Thanks for sending that over.

Taking a look, there are 349 items in “not allowed”. 317 of these are Google Docs that are distributed in the following folder:
/Users/matthewdnye/odrive/Google Drive - FINT50/Team Drives/Lists/Seamless Scraping Project/Seamless Scraping Data/

To clear these:

  1. Right-click on the /Users/matthewdnye/odrive/Google Drive - FINT50/Team Drives/Lists/Seamless Scraping Project/Seamless Scraping Data folder
  2. Select “unsync”
  3. “Force” the unsync

This will collapse that folder back into a placeholder file and get rid of all of these invalid Google Docs.

Once that is done send over another diagnostic and we can see what is left to work through.

This is done and new diagnostic sent

Hi @matt.nye,
The not allowed list is now down to 20. Most of these are google docs that were likely moved or copied and can’t be uploaded.

  1. You can see a full list in the “Users/matthewdnye/odrive/current_odrive_status.txt” file that was created when you send the diagnostic. Look under the “Not Allowed” section.
  2. If you go through the list and remove these invalid files, that will clear-up the majority of the remaining items.
  3. The remaining 3 items are:
    • /Users/matthewdnye/odrive/Google Drive - FINT50/Team Drives/State-Individual-Income-Tax-Rates-and-Brackets-2015-2023-fv.xlsx
      This file is in the Team Drives root, which can’t contain anything but Drives, so you will need to move this to a Drive folder.

    • /Users/matthewdnye/odrive/Google Drive - FINT50/Shared with Me/NATE50
      It looks like this may have been a folder that was copied or moved into the “Shared With Me” folder. The Shared With Me folder is a special area that is reserved for things that have been shared with you, only. You will need to move this folder to another location, either inside of a folder that has been shared with you that you have write access to, or some other location that you own/have permission to.

    • /Users/matthewdnye/odrive/Google Drive - UNIF50/Team Drives/Presentations/UFFMoneyMaxLive-Corp-Final-PW-REDUCED-HQ.pptx
      It looks like this file cannot be uploaded due to insufficient permissions in the Presentations Drive.