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The sync icon never reaches a finished state and a file you saved is not showing up elsewhere. Most cases are one bad file, not a broken installation.
Click the OneDrive cloud icon in the system tray. It names the file it is stuck on far more often than it reports a general failure — and the named file is usually the whole problem.
Names containing " * : < > ? / \ | fail to sync, as do names ending in a space or a full stop. Rename the offending file and sync generally resumes on its own.
Both ends matter: the local disk and the OneDrive storage quota. A full quota stops sync silently, and files remain fine locally, which is why it goes unnoticed.
A document open in Word or Excel — including a copy still open on another machine — can hold a lock that blocks sync. Close it everywhere and give it a minute.
Pause syncing from the tray icon, wait ten seconds, and resume. If that does not clear it, close OneDrive completely and start it again. This resolves the majority of remaining cases.
Unlink this PC in OneDrive settings, then sign in again. Your files stay in the cloud and are re-downloaded. Do not delete the local folder first — if something has not synced, that local copy is the only copy.
If sync has been stuck for more than a day, if it is stuck on several machines at once, or if a file exists in one place and not the other and you cannot tell which version is current. Do not delete anything to force a fix — tell us instead.
If the fault turns out to be in the Microsoft service rather than your setup, we take it from there — you keep one point of contact.