.gddoc files have appeared in my drive

[Mil_Komlenic]

Hi

My business partner and i both use insync and have a shared folder between us in Google Drive and everything has been running fine, but i recently needed to switch back to Google Drive Sync Client temporarily and now my we both are seeing gddocs, gdsheet, etc files created in the shared folder. These files say that i am the owner and only appeared after switch back to Google Drive Sync client.

1. Is there an easy way to get rid of these duplicate files? or do i have to delete them manually?

2. Does this mean that all users of a Google Drive shared folder need to be using insync and that you cannot have 1 user using insync and the other using google drive sync?

3. What are these gd… files anyway, i cannot even open them?

4. Also, off topic… is this forum the only way to get in touch for support requests? don’t you have a ticket system?

Cheers
Mil

[jaduenas]

Hi @Mil_Komlenic would be glad to elp

1. This is an issue present in our previous versions since the feature file matching wasn’t available. The new version will prevent these from happening: New Insync version: 1.3.2

2. You can have users both from Insync and Google Drive sync, is there a particular error appearing?

3. These are google docs files, there is an option in Insync to convert these to Microsoft Office or OpenDocument, just click on your account>click on CONVERT

4. You can contact us at support@insynchq.com

[dipesh]

@Mil_Komlenic: Insync downloads Google Format files (when not being converted to Office format) as .gddoc, .gdsheet etc. - these files do not contain any data but metadata & can be thought of as shortcuts to the corresponding Google Format files on Google Drive web. If you have Insync installed, double clicking these files would take you to the corresponding files online.

Similarly, Google Drive sync app downloads Google Format files as .gdoc, .gsheet etc. Since it does not recognize the .gddoc, .gdsheet etc. it would not have tried to read it as shortcuts but as normal files and must have uploaded it as normal text files.

1. You should manually delete the .gddoc, .gdsheet files on Google Drive web.

2. No, 1 user may use Insync and others can use Google Drive sync app. The Insync user in his folder would have .gddoc, .gdsheet etc. files whereas correspondingly, the Google Drive sync app user would have .gdoc,.gsheet files in his Google Drive folder.

The issue here seems to be that .gddoc, .gdsheets etc. files from Insync folder were added to Google Drive sync app folder (upon migration) and hence Google Drive sync app uploaded those as usual files.

Thanks

[Dominik_Wosiek]

I guess that is the place to report a major issue I had by using Insync, which I seriously consider not to do any more. I have installed Insync on ubuntu to sync my Google Drive where I have a shared folder for a start up idea, which I share with two other people using Google sync for windows. As written above Insync added gddoc and gdsheet files, which appeared odd at first, but okay. Now I notice that Insync actually DELETED the original files, respectively links in Google Drive. Well the documents are still there, but not visible in the online Google Drive mask. I could restore files that I authored from the trash bin. However as of yet the only feasible way of restoring the remaining files, for which I am not the original author, is to use the link in the gddoc or gdsheet files, ask for permission to access and then move the document back to its original place.

[dipesh]

@Dominik_Wosiek: Did you remove the .gddoc, .gdsheet etc. files locally? If so, it would lead to trashing of the corresponding Google format files online. How would you expect it to behave?

Thanks

[Dominik_Wosiek]

Of course I did not. I understand the need to provide some form of symbolic link on the local filesystem and those were working fine. Only when I accessed my Gdrive via the web browser at work I found that all Google documents were deleted, whilst gddoc, etc. remained. I could find documents that I authored myself in my trash bin, however for each other documents that were shared with me, I had to painfully request access from my colleagues after I restored (via google drive sync on windows) the respective *.gdoc and *.gtab files from a backup.
I should mention that the timestamp of the delete seems to equal to the installation of insync.
How would I expect it to behave? Well, keeping my files and permissions intact would be a start.

[dipesh]

@Dominik_Wosiek: Please note that Insync does not upload .gddoc, .gdsheet etc. files to your Google Drive. It seems that you moved/copied those .gddoc etc. files from Insync folder to the Google Drive sync folder?

Insync only creates those files locally as shortcuts to the corresponding Google format files.

Please send to us the logs.db and compressed copy of the dbs folder (present next to the logs.db file) at support@insynchq.com so that we could confirm how the deletions happened.

How to find the log files

Tray icon is visible Click on the [image] in your tray menu. Click on the ellipsis to show the support center directory [ellipses] Go to support and click on locate logs - We’ll need the logs.db and out.txt files for investigation [4 locate] Tray icon is not visible The following directories contain logs.db and out.txt: Windows %appdata%\Insync You can copy and paste this path directly into Explorer’s address bar, and it will automatically open the folder containing the logs. M…

[Dave_Huffman]

I just had this problem (installed InSync on Feb 6, 2017) and it is a huge clusterfuck that has seriously damaged my credibility.

I am seriously freaked out.

[Dave_Huffman]

On what planet did it make sense to write software moves original docs to a trash folder, and replace it with a file format that Drive doesn’t recognize?

[shovan]

My files are converted into gddoc and I am unable to locate the original files. Now I have lots 10000 of documents and google sheet. I wish I never installed insync

Is there a way to recover all my work

[Gregory]

Hey @shovan,

Apologies for the experience. Could you kindly send us an email at support@insynchq.com with your log files and out.txt so our engineer can take a look at the issue?

[shovan]

I have uninstalled insync a while back. I was going through my old folder to retrieve an important file and all I see is gddoc. I can send the gddoc if it helps.

I have over 1000 gddoc files and none of them open.

[Gim6626]

I think Insync should show BIG RED message saying that all files are synced but gddoc are only shortcuts because I needed for some time to clear my Google Drive (trash too) and I thought that local insynced copy will be ok and I can restore it then - but NO, I lost few hundred of important documents. Very very disappointed.

[mia]

Hello, @Gim6626!

My deepest apologies for the huge trouble!! Would you like us to investigate further what happened? If so, you may send your log files (logs.db and out.txt files) to support@insynchq.com with the link to this post so we can check it out.