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How To Reset OneDrive if Syncing Stops
9 Slides
To unlink your OneDrive account from Windows just Right-Click the OneDrive icon in your system tray and select Settings.
Once that dialog box is open, as shown in this image, click on Unlink OneDrive.
There is no warning dialog or confirmation for this action.
Immediately after clicking on Unlink OneDrive you will be prompted with this dialog box to re-connect your system to OneDrive.
Just type in your Microsoft Account email address and click Sign in to get started.
You will then see this standard Microsoft Account sign in dialog.
Provide your account email and password then click Sign in.
If you use Two Factor Authentication with your account you will now be prompted to provide that information before continuing the setup process.
The next dialog will show you the default location for your OneDrive folder,
Unless you have specifically changed this location for some reason the default is where your files were at before so you should not change this.
Note: If you change the default location all of your OneDrive files will download again.
This dialog simply confirms there are files in the default destination. Select Use this location to continue with the files in the default storage folder.
This dialog asks you to confirm which OneDrive folders you want to sync. By default all folders are selected.
The last dialog confirms your OneDrive is ready to go. Just close this to continue and your files will be checked against what is in the cloud and any missing/unsyched files will then be downloaded to your system.
If for some reason the unlinking process does not solve your OneDrive sync issue then you can follow the steps and reset OneDrive.
Remember, using these steps to reset OneDrive will normally cause the items in your cloud storage to re-sync down to the device.
Follow these steps to reset OneDrive:
Open a Run as dialog box by hitting the WINDOWS and R key.
Once that Run as dialog is on your screen enter or copy and paste this info in the dialog: %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset
Click OK and the command will be run. You may see a Command Prompt window appear on the screen briefly as the reset command is executed.
At ths point you should notice that the OneDrive system tray icon disappears. It should return after the OneDrive process starts back up again.
After the icon returns to the system tray just right click on it and select Settings then Choose folders so that you can select the folders you want to sync to this device.
At this point everything should be working once again.
If for some reason the unlinking process does not solve your OneDrive sync issue then you can follow the steps and reset OneDrive.
Remember, using these steps to reset OneDrive will normally cause the items in your cloud storage to re-sync down to the device.
Follow these steps to reset OneDrive:
Open a Run as dialog box by hitting the WINDOWS and R key.
Once that Run as dialog is on your screen enter or copy and paste this info in the dialog: %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset
Click OK and the command will be run. You may see a Command Prompt window appear on the screen briefly as the reset command is executed.
At ths point you should notice that the OneDrive system tray icon disappears. It should return after the OneDrive process starts back up again.
After the icon returns to the system tray just right click on it and select Settings then Choose folders so that you can select the folders you want to sync to this device.
At this point everything should be working once again.
Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service has improved a lot over the years and it has become a pretty reliable tool for syncing your files across multiple devices using the cloud.
There used to be a time that OneDrive was notorious for failing to sync files properly or simply stopping the sync process all together and while things have improved there might be the odd occasion that it could happen to you.
If your sync freezes or stops the first step you can try is to simply unlink your OneDrive account from your system and then immediately re-connect to OneDrive to start syncing again.
There are about seven steps to accomplish this task and it avoids having to re-download all of your OneDrive files.
If for some reason that process does not resolve your original issue then you can reset OneDrive using the Command Prompt. Those steps are are provided in the final page of the gallery but be aware there is one item to be aware of.
If you use the Command Prompt reset process it will resync all of your OneDrive files so take that into consideration as you consider which method to use.
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