Seemingly normal files skipped during synchronization

[AdamK]

I have a workspace that I use to keep my files synced between a few
different computers with Groove 2007. It has been working fine for
over a year. It is a large workspace (1555 MB, 3750 Files according to
the Groove properties), but this is under the stated limits.

My problem is that there are a few files that are getting "skipped"
during synchronization. They are .docx files, they are not Hidden, and
they are not particularly large (less than 2 MB). There are other
files of the same type in the same folder that are syncing just fine.
When I go to the Status tab and click on one of the files being
Skipped, the explanation is:
"Files of this type are not synchronized by this workspace."
Clearly this is not very helpful since .docx is not on the blocked
list, and plenty of other .docx files are syncing fine, even ones in
the same folder.

Any ideas on what could be causing these files not to sync, and how to
fix it?

Thanks for your help,
AdamK

 

[Gregg Johnston [MSFT]]

Hi Adam,

You are starting to creep up on the 2 GB limit that Groove has for spaces.
The reason that the Groove size is bigger than the actual size is because
there are synchronizations that need to be made to other users or other
computers. So there are a couple of things that you should do:

1. Go to Options > Preferences > Account and remove any computers that you
are no longer running Groove on
2. Start breaking this space into smaller spaces. You will need to create
new spaces and manually move the data into the new spaces, but this will
increase your performance and synchronization reliability.

Gregg

 

[AdamK]

Hi Gregg,

Thanks so much for your help.

I did as you suggested and broke the workspace down into multiple
smaller spaces. This was definitely a good idea on a number of counts
(not the least of which was that it got me to do some much needed
cleanup and reorganization of files). However, the culprit files
continued to get skipped during synchronization, even in their new
smaller workspaces!

At this point I became convinced that there was SOMETHING different
about these files. I even used "attrib" to list the file attributes
and still found nothing out of the ordinary. However, I then found a
program called "fileTweak" that showed me many more file attributes,
including, critically, the "Temporary" attribute. The Temporary
attribute was set for the files that Groove was skipping over!
Skipping files with this attribute is the stated behavior of Groove,
so this is no surprise. What is puzzling to me is why or how this
attribute got set on these particular files. Anyway, with fileTweak I
was able to unset this bit, and then Groove was instantly back to
syncing these files as usual.

So, the lesson learned is that it is possible for the Temporary
attribute to get on a file without intending it to happen, and that
once this occurs Groove will stop syncing it. I'd just as well not pay
for "fileTweak" (its free to try) so if anyone knows how to view and
change the "Temporary" file attribute with a free program, I'm all
ears. And finally - it sure would be nice if Groove was more specific
in its error messages - i.e. if the status message explaining why
Groove was skipping these files had stated that it was because they
were Temporary.

Thanks again for your help, and I hope this message helps others
figure out this problem in the future,
AdamK