SharePoint Online - when overwriting existing file, file is uploaded twice

Question

This is a bug report more than a request for help.

When a file is transferred to SharePoint to replace an existing file, the file is uploaded, then I am prompted to either overwrite the existing file or keep both files, and then - when I select overwrite - the file is uploaded for a second time.

This is not so bad when I'm in the office, but working from home with much less bandwidth (the file I'm transferring is relatively large) it's a real pain.

Answer 1

Hi Michael,

Thank you for querying in this forum.

From your description, it seems that you are trying uploading a file to replace an existing file in SharePoint Online, however, when you selected overwrite, you found this file has been uploaded for a second time.

May I know if my understanding is right? If so, we have also tested it on our side, we went to SharePoint Document library and uploaded a file, then we uploaded again the same file, we encountered the error message, as shown below:

And per our test, before showing this message, the file will be uploaded for the first time, and after clicking Replace, it will be uploaded for the second time. This may because SharePoint identified a file with the same file name at the end of uploading the file, so after clicking Replace, it re-run the upload process.

Given this situation, we do understand the inconvenience caused and apologize for it.

We also understand that you want to avoid uploading twice, , since we can reproduce the same situation as yours, this issue may need to be checked from background, we’d suggest you contact the administrators in your organizations and open a support ticket in the Office 365 admin center via the steps in the article for further help and provide your suggestion and feedback. The support team there has the correct escalation channel for this case. This is also the most efficient way in handling this kind of issue.

For a workaround, if you just want to overwrite the original file, to avoid uploading twice, we’d suggest you go to SharePoint Document library to delete the original file and upload the file.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated! I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Best Regards,

Sukie

Answer 2

I think we can all agree this isn't the sort of behaviour we should be seeing in a file/document cloud system, especially when we're spoilt for choice in 2021.

This becomes a major problem when dealing with large files such as videos or animations, or lots of high res images.

Furthermore, this sort of behaviour isn't seen with other cloud systems such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Deleting the file before hand isn't a decent workaround as this would mean sharing links again on each upload.

I'd like to see Microsoft address this issue.

Answer 3

Thanks for adding some weight to the issue @MelbourneCreative.

Deleting the file is not a solution because I want to retain the file history.

I'll raise a ticket with my IT people and get them to open an Office 365 ticket.

Answer 4

Here is the final outcome of this issue:

Service request ID:

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2xxxxxxxx3

Issue Description:

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When overwriting existing file, file is uploaded twice

Assessment

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Regarding your concern, per checking at our end and confirming with Microsoft senior resources, we found that its an expected behavior while you upload a file in SPO that already exists and then selecting the option replace so that SharePoint system starts uploading that file again from the beginning. Its a by design of the product.

I understand that this does not meet your requirements; we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you; but as of the moment, it won't be possible to change the design of the product.

I also would like to suggest you submit the global signature feature request to our user voice portal to let our Product Group know about your concern; they will review your feedback into consideration and maybe include this feature in the next update that they will release.

Answer 5

'By design' or 'Ill conceived'? I say the latter.

Honestly there doesn't exist a scenario where this sort of behaviour is beneficial to the end user.

If a graphics department producing is using Sharepoint to store files, you expect them to wait an hour uploading multiple hundred megabyte video files, click 'Replace' and wait all over again?

Imagine if Windows did this when copying files? (it doesn't)

No other file sharing service works like this. Not even OneDrive!