[Issue]: Files that existed before installing MEGASync are automatically added to exclusions list individually

[VGBoy]

Issue

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Summary

Provide a brief summary of the issue or suggestion.

When attempting to sync a desktop folder to my Mega account, it doesn't sync everything and instead adds some files to the exclusions list without me knowing. It also creates a rule for each individual file making it hard to undo the mistake

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Steps to Reproduce (For Bug Reports)

1. Set up a folder on desktop for syncing that already has files present inside
2. The files that have existed before installing MEGASync don't get synced, and instead get added to the list of exclusions

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What happened?

I set up a pre-existing folder of files on my desktop to be synced with MEGA, and it started adding exclusion rules that omitted multiple files that existed before installing the desktop app

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What did you expect to happen?

I was expecting all my files to be synced instead of a select few, and I wasn't expecting files to be automatically excluded with no control.

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Environment Details

Provide details about the environment where the issue occurred.

• OS: Windows 11
• MEGASync Version: 6.1.0

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Screenshots

Include screenshots or videos if applicable.

[rl-mega]

Hi @VGBoy, thanks for reporting.

It seems that exclusions were added automatically by the "smart" issue resolution mode. This happens to files/folders that the sync engine can't sync (links, reparse points, sometimes files that are or have been also synced with another software...).
What you can do to understand better what is happening is to set the "Issue resolution mode" to "Advanced" in the "Sync" tab of the settings dialog and clear all the added exclusions (it might be faster to open the .megaignore file located at the root of your synced folder with a text editor and remove all the unwanted lines). This way, if a sync issue occurs, the app will give you information and show you options on how to resolve it.
For a more in-depth investigation, you can contact our support team and securely provide them app logs, they should show why the rules were added.

Cheers

[VGBoy]

How would I get the app logs?

[rl-mega]

You can find them in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Mega Limited\MEGAsync (e.g., C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Mega Limited\MEGAsync).

[vermiculator]

I had this issue, it was symlinks and I can't retrieve them.

[csrobins03]

I'm having the same problem. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the original sync being started inside the Documents folder that was in One Drive. I disabled OneDrive's annoying backup stuff with the documents folder, but could that have cause some sort of symlink issue?

[csrobins03]

The problem for me really was related to OneDrive. Since my MEGA folder had originally and accidentally started in the OneDrive\Documents folder, each of the files was marked as a NTFS reparse point to the cloud file even though the actual files as far as I could tell were on the disk. When I "moved" the folder, the links stayed.

The solution instead was to "copy" the MEGA folder to a new location instead of moving it and set up MEGA to sync with the copy which were no longer labeled as reparse points.