Msosync process, what is it?

If you are using Office 2010, you may have come across MSOSYNC.EXE process in the Task Manager. MSOSYNC.EXE Process?

Microsoft Office 2010 now caches your document for faster viewing. Whether it is a Word document, Excel spread sheet, or a PowerPoint presentation, Office 2010 will cache the documents. Msosync.exe process stands for Microsoft Office Document Cache and is used to cache the documents. In layman’s term, Msosync.exe process makes caching of Office 2010 documents possible.

What happen if you Kill the process?

It’s safe to end the process. It takes 2-3MB of system memory and does not effect the overall speed of the OS. It will start again when Office 2010 begins to cache a document.

What else is this process used for?

Remember Office 2010 Upload Center?

The documents when uploaded to SkyDrive are cached in the local drive for faster viewing. You can view all cached files by opening Upload Center and then selecting All Cached Files from the drop-down menu.

Short Tip for Beginners: Open Upload Center by typing Upload Center in Start Searchand then hit Enter.

How to Delete cached documents?

Office 2010 by default reserves 10% quota for cached documents. In my case it equals to 14.5Gb of space, which is a lot. To delete cache, head over to Upload Center settings and hit the Delete Cached Filesbutton.

When prompted for confirmation, hit Delete Cached Informationbutton.

This will delete all cached files and free up some disk space along the way. Since there is a direct relationship between the MSOSYNC.EXE process and the Document Cache, we have covered both tips in this post.