Question : Windows 7 Offline File Sync issues - Location is not available: The file is currently not available for use on this computer.

We've recently migrated data for a user from a Windows 2003 server to a NetApp storage.  The user is on a Win 7 x64 heavily relying on Sync Center to synchronise the offline files from the migrated shares.

After migration, I have followed the below steps to enable those shared folder (its actually users' home folder) for offline use.

- Sync the exisitng offline files with the old share on 2003 server.  
- Sync'ed these files using Robocopy to the netapp filer.
- Disabled the existing share offline use.
- Restarted her laptop and re-enabled the offline files.
- Mapped the new share and enabled it so that it is always available offline.

User did get a confirmation from Sync Center "Completed preparing files so they are always available offline - One or more errors occurred.  See below for details (2 errors)".  The errors referred to were with synchronising a .doc file and a temp file that was open at that time as a process.  When we checked the files access (both offline and online) as soon as the sync is complete, I was able to access the files.

However, the user was unable to access most of the offline items when tried to access them from the home network.  Most of the folders and the subdirectories (including the content) have a grey X mark with almost transparent icons and when tried to access got the below error message.

Error Message:

Location is not available: <File path> is not accessible.  This file is currently not available for use on this computer.

It is the same even after the user connects to the VPN connection and tries to access the files online.  I've read in Microsoft Answers forum (from one of the old posts) that it is a known issue inherited from Vista.  Can someone throw some light on this issue and let me know if this has been patched or fixed by Microsoft already?

Forum Reference: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7desktop/thread/d7d68a78-f6f1-4337-99a0-c44bb364dcca

Answer : Windows 7 Offline File Sync issues - Location is not available: The file is currently not available for use on this computer.

I've figured out what the problem could be but I still need to understand why that happened!  The message I had from Sync Center although confirms that the synchronisation was successful, in reality the files & folders were not completely made available offline.

I was able to reproduce the same scenario (files/folders marked with X at the corner and transparent icons) by mapping a network share, making it available offline, synchronising it PARTIALLY and trying to access files offline.  As the files are not made available offline fully, windows was unable to serve them to the user when they were accessed!  Although this does not answer why the user was unable to access the share online (it could be a one off issue) on a VPN connection as ideally they must be available online when on a VPN connection!!

Can anyone throw a light on whether there are any limits to the below attributes which may affect Sync Centers' ability to handle the synchronisation of offline folders.

1) The amount of data (size on disk - In this scenario, the users' data was ~33GB)

2) Number of files/folders

3) Levels of folders in directory structure

4) The lenght of the longest file path (In XP the file path that exceeds 255 characters will cause problems, which I have experienced before)

We've managed to resolve the issue by resynchronising the folders but it is not ideal not to be able to rely on Sync Centers' confirmations.  I would also like to know why Sync Center was unable to point the synchronisation failure, I'm sure there are predefined parameters which affect this behavior !?!?