Documents are always stored online and what appears in the Google Drive folder on the local disk drive is just a web link to open a browser, which then opens the online document for editing. In my case, something had gone wrong with syncing a Google Doc file. It is not the whole folder that is faulty and any error, even with a single file, causes its containing folder to show the sync error red cross, so drill down through the folders to the faulty file. Anything with a red cross is a sync error.

This is not the only way to find out if there are sync problems and files and folders have a green tick on them in Explorer windows. Is the reason always right? It is in this case, although it may not be in every case, so investigate the file and try to figure out what is wrong. It tells you the name and location of the file, and the reason why it cannot be synced. Here you can see that there is one file that cannot be synced:Ĭlicking the menu link opens a window that displays the error. To see if there are any problems with syncing files, right click the Google Drive icon in the taskbar in Windows. How do you know when something has gone wrong? Sync problems are rare, but they do occur and sometimes a file cannot be uploaded from the Google Drive folder on the computer to your online Drive storage space.

Just drag one or more files or folders to the Google Drive folder and the app will upload them in the background to keep online and offline copies in sync. It saves having to up and download files through the browser.

The Google Drive app can be installed on a Windows PC or Apple Mac and this creates a folder on the local disk drive that is a mirror image of your online storage space.

Pc google drive not syncing