[sims] Reports using old data files (and OneDrive)

[DJ-1701]

When running reports a few users have discovered that old data is being referenced, I have found that clearing out these two locations before SIMS and Excel are opened allows SIMS and Office to generate the reports correctly.

 

%UserProfile%\Documents\tempSimsRpt

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\OfficeFileCache

 

Now, I was going to make a script to wipe these folders on login, but... we have OneDrive syncing the Documents folder, so any changes stored in OneDrive will be pulled down when loading SIMS.

 

I was wondering if there was any way to prevent a certain folder such as the tempSimRpt from being uploaded into OneDrive in the same way that certain file types can be prevented. Any ideas?

[mullet_man]

When running reports a few users have discovered that old data is being referenced, I have found that clearing out these two locations before SIMS and Excel are opened allows SIMS and Office to generate the reports correctly.

 

%UserProfile%\Documents\tempSimsRpt

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\OfficeFileCache

 

Now, I was going to make a script to wipe these folders on login, but... we have OneDrive syncing the Documents folder, so any changes stored in OneDrive will be pulled down when loading SIMS.

 

I was wondering if there was any way to prevent a certain folder such as the tempSimRpt from being uploaded into OneDrive in the same way that certain file types can be prevented. Any ideas?

 

Thanks for this, I found deleting the OfficeFileCache folder was all we needed to do.

 

But it keeps doing it now which is very annoying. Is this an Office 365 issue or a SIMS issue?

[psydii]

I suspect it is the speed at which sims is generating the files in Office apps that is causing bugs in the interaction of the Office Document Cache and OneDrive Client.

 

Until recently there was the Office Upload Center app that was a more user friendly way to clear this problem.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/delete-your-office-document-cache-b1d3765e-d71b-4bb8-99ca-acd22c42995d#:~:text=Here%27s%20an%20overview%20of%20the%20process%20to%20delete,sync%20operation%20should%20clear%20up%20any%20%22stuck%22%20files.

(a clean boot was never required in my experience)

[DJ-1701]

It's a mix, though really SIMS should not be storing temporary files in 'Documents', it's a very poor design. If they were stored in %Temp% it wouldn't be an issue, nor would it be an issue if they generated the Excel files using different methods.

 

Microsoft Office files in OneDrive folders will by default redirect to the Online stored resources so they can be worked on by multiple people at once, this is in case you have shared a file for editing. This can be disabled by disabling File collaboration with OneDrive, but of course this is a useful feature for normal Office files.

 

Talking to SIMS support, the path for using the shell Documents folder tempSimsRpt is hard coded, which is a royal pain and shouldn't in my opinion. There are details on the support site saying SIMS is not compatible with OneDrive, but last I checked didn't have much detail on that. The only issue I have found is with the tempSimsRpt directory and the old macro .xls excel templates and associated ReportData.* files it tries to grab data from.