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“Sync” button greyed out on SharePoint library

If the “Sync” option is not available for a library on SharePoint, it could be a couple different things.

Note: Media and Form/InfoPath Libraries will not sync but you can still open them in Windows Explorer and pin to Quick Access so they will function as a mapped drive would.

Sync button is available in one library but no another on the same site

Go to the library for which the sync button is disabled

Go to library settings

Click “Advanced Settings”

Make sure “Offline Client Availability” is set to “Yes”

Sync button is not available on ANY library on a site

Go to Site Settings and select “Search and offline availability” from the “Search” section

Make sure “Offline Client Availability” is set to “Yes”

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Open a SharePoint Library in Windows Explorer and save it to Quick Access

If you can’t sync a library, or prefer not to, you can pin the web location of a SharePoint form, media, or document library to your “Quick Access” panel in Windows Explorer.

This allows you to interact with (edit, replace, delete) the files just as you would in a network drive but requires that you’re connected to your SharePoint environment – there are no offline files in this method.

Access the library in Windows Explorer

  1. Copy URL of library in SharePoint
  2. Open Windows Explorer and paste in URL, deleting everything after the library name
  3. Hit Enter

Pin to Quick Access

You could then right-click “Quick access” on the left of Windows Explorer and select “Pin current folder to Quick Access” to bookmark it for next time

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OneDrive and SharePoint sync issue: “You now have two copies of a file; we couldn’t merge the changes in [filename]” appended with computer name

couldntmergechanges

If you’ve seen a similar notification, I empathize with your pain. I don’t know that there is one solution to this problem, either, so I’m going to share a number of them we’ve used and hope that one (or all) of them will help you.

Basically a file is added through file explorer (a cloud library in OneDrive or SharePoint being synced locally to your computer) but then after a moment a notification appears which says “You now have two copies of a file; we couldn’t merge the changes in [filename]” and then the filename is appended with your computer name again and again until eventually the filename is too long and is harder to delete. Let’s not get to that point.

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