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iCloud not syncing all files to Windows 10 PC

Anonymous
2020-03-21T05:20:53+00:00

I use iCloud Drive to share files between my MacBook Air, my iPhone 11 Pro Max, and my original iPad Pro with no problems. When I add a file to a directory on any of my Apple devices, it pretty much shows up immediately on all of the other ones. I also have iCloud Drive on my Windows PC, and syncing is simply not working well.

Here's an example: I have a folder called Affinity Designer at the top level (iCloud Drive\Affinity Designer). It has four subdirectories under it. For simplicities sake, let's call them One, Two, Three, and Four. All four directories show up on all apple devices. On my PC however, only One and Three show up. One has only two files in it, and both are there on the PC. Three has four files in it, and they're all there too. But the subdirectories Two and Four never showed up at all. I have killed all iCloud processes using the task manager and restarted iCloud Drive, but nothing changes. If I click on the iCloud icon in the system tray, I can see the number of files to download grow and then diminish - but it never gets below 8 or 9 files. Those files don't seem to want to download, but I din't have any idea how to identify what they are. I also have some 30,000 photos in iCloud, so those 8 or nine files could be photos, I guess.

As I said, subdirectories Two and Four never appear on the PC. Two has 20 files in it; Four has 75. if I open the iCloud drive in a Chrome tab, I see all files in all four directories. As a workaround, I figured I could download the files with iCloud in Chrome, create the Two and Four subdirectories manually, and copy the files into those subdirectories. However, when I tried to create the subdirectories on my PC, they immediately got renamed Two 2 and Four 2. So it appeals the PC knows somehow that Two and Four exist, but it just isn't displaying them for some reason.

I tried another workaround: on my Mac, I made another directory named Affinity Designer SRB, and copied all four subdirectories into the new directory, Then I went and rebooted the PC - and this time, subdirectories One and Four showed up; Two and Three were nowhere to be seen. Four ended up with 58 of the 75 files in it - I downloaded the ones it missed, and now it has all 75 files (which tells me it's not a problem with an individual file in Four, at least.

I have checked to see that iCloud is up to date on my PC. Everything but iCloud is working fine, so it's not network related. The only thing I haven't tried is logging out of iCloud and back in - with 30,000 pictures, that's no small endeavor.

I'm running Windows 10 Build 1909 and up to date Apple operating systems.

Anybody have any ideas?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-07T02:35:22+00:00

    It would be super if on ANY of these help pages you "genius" "specialists" would actually post something relevant to the sodding problem. I went through ALL of those links and they all relate to products running IOS.....NOT....Windows 10. Microsoft answers is just full of fake tech morons who dont actually provide any help to anyone and use it as a method to stroke their cretinous egos so they can boast to their friends that THEY ALONE are tech support gods.

    If you don't know, DONT F-ING RESPOND.

    200+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2020-07-21T01:50:02+00:00

    My icloud drive previously syncs really well with Windows 10. However, after a window update a few days ago. Icloud drive stopped working. Doesnt sync anymore. NO idea what to do now

    UPDATED

    FIX.

    Found the Fix out of nowhere. So previously I've disabled the Icloud Photos Sync. After re-enable the Icloud Photos Sync. It kinda triggered the sync process again.

    Hope this helps.

    30+ people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-18T01:22:39+00:00

    Bottom line-WINDOWS SUCKS. It's not Icloud. Its WINDOWS, which is synonymous with GARBAGE IN=GARBAGE OUT!!

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2020-10-22T02:31:38+00:00

    Chris O is correct.  My registry files were fine however this seems to be being caused by a conflict with OneDrive.  I either use Google Drive or iCloud Drive so OneDrive isn't even a necessity for me.  I simply uninstalled OneDrive and restarted.  I then logged out and back into iCloud and my files synced properly.

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2020-10-05T10:55:15+00:00

    Hi All

    I also had the problem with iCloud not syncing files on Windows 10.  My iOS devices were syncronising as expected.  In my case I'm also running OneDrive and had mapped some of my Windows default folders to iCloud (Desktop, Music, Pictures).

    I managed to fix the problem (with help from a post from Dahark) as follows ....

    1. Temporarily disable OneDrive (right-click on OneDrive in the System Tray and select Pause Syncing for 2 hours);
    2. Change registry settings as follows:

        - Right-click the Windows logo and then click Run.

        - Type regedit.exe and press Enter. If User Account Controlwindow pops up, click Yes.

        - In Registry Editor, browse to the following path:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

    In the Registry, change these folder locations back to their Windows defaults:

    Parameter Value
    Desktop %USERPROFILE%\Desktop
    Favorites %USERPROFILE%\Favorites
    My Music %USERPROFILE%\Music
    My Pictures %USERPROFILE%\Pictures
    My Video %USERPROFILE%\Videos
    Personal %USERPROFILE%\Documents

    3.  Restart Windows.

    After the restart, iCloud starts to re-sync.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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