Why custom list item versions do not preserve the attachments when restore an old version

Question

I have a custom list which contain custom content type and it allow attachments, now i am storing 100 item versions ..

but i have noted when i restore a previous version of the list item, it will always keep the current attachment and ignore the version attachment, is this a limitation inside SharePoint custom list? and is there any workarounds?

For example on version 1, i have an attachment named 1.docx

 

 

and on version 2, i have uploaded another attachment named 2.docx ans remove 1.docx, 

 

but when i restore the item to version 1, i got 2.docx as the attachment instead of 1.docx,

 

Any advice ?

 

Thanks

Answer 1

In SharePoint lists, when you restore a previous version of a list item, the attachments associated with that version are not automatically restored. Instead, the current attachments remain, and the previous version's attachments are not included. This behavior is due to the way SharePoint handles versioning for list items and their attachments.

SharePoint's versioning for list items tracks changes to the item's properties but does not include attachments in the version history. Therefore, when you restore a previous version of a list item, the system does not revert to the attachments that were present at that time. This limitation arises because attachments are stored separately from the list item properties and are not versioned alongside them.

As a workaround, you could create a Power Automate flow to automate the process of restoring attachments when a list item version is restored.

Reference:

https://www.csharp.com/blogs/restore-version-of-a-sharepoint-list-item-using-power-automate

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