How SharePoint Workspace works with the Microsoft Office Upload Center

SharePoint Workspace users may quickly notice the near omnipresence of the Microsoft Office Upload Center icon in their Windows notification area:

The Microsoft Office Upload Center (msosync.exe) manages synchronization between your SharePoint workspaces and their corresponding SharePoint sites. As a result, given the frequency of synchronization between a SharePoint workspace and the SharePoint site, the Upload Center icon is present most of the time in your notification area, and you are likely to see frequent notifications about synchronization activities. For example, you may see notifications about pending uploads or upload failures.

Note: SharePoint workspaces can synchronize only with sites running on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Online 2010 servers.

It may surprise you to discover, when you open the Microsoft Office Upload Center, that there is no feature present for exiting the Upload Center. This is because applications such as SharePoint Workspace rely on the Upload Center to be running in order to function properly. And although it’s possible to exit the Upload Center by clicking End Process in the Windows Task Manager, doing so is not recommended.

If you have a great amount of synchronization activity, you may also receive a large number of notifications, which appear above the Upload Center icon. If you are finding this distracting, you can select options to hide certain types of notifications or simply hide the Upload Center icon.

To change Upload Center settings, click the Upload Center icon, and then click Settings. Do one of the following in the Microsoft Office Upload Center Settings dialog box:

· To suppress notifications, uncheck any of the options for showing notifications.

· To hide the Upload Center icon, uncheck Display icon in notification area.

If you have hidden the Upload Center icon, and want it to show again in the notification area, you must first open the Upload Center. Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office 2010 Tools, and then Microsoft Office 2010 Upload Center. In the Upload Center window, click Settings, and then check Display icon in notification area.

Joe Levine