Base
Alcohols are not very good nucleophiles, but alkoxide anions are great ones. So we can use a base to deprotonate some of the alcohols.
It can also happen intramolecularly:
Intramolecular reactions are usually much faster than intermolecular ones, this is why the above reaction can use MeO- as a base without having it compete by acting as a nucleophile.
Acid
Alcohols are not very good nucleophiles, but a C=OH+ is very easy to attack. So we can make the reaction go by protonating the C=O:
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