This small issue occasionally affects OneDrive application and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. In this particular case, it happened on a Mac, but the same can occur on a Windows PC.

OneDrive stays in a permanent “updating” status. Clicking on the app icon shows “preparing to upload”.

Sometimes it can happen if a file is “locked” and inaccessible to OneDrive for sync. If this happens, closing the application that “locked” the file or simply restarting the computer fixes the issue.

In this particular case, my client from Bicester (Oxfordshire) restarted his Mac Mini multiple times before contacting our IT Support, but the “preparing to upload” was still there and not going anywhere.

The fix was to unlink the OneDrive from his Microsoft account (this doesn’t delete any locally saved files). Then link it back and resync the OneDrive (to the same folder so it doesn’t have to re-download files that are already saved locally).