Sharepoint Issue - "copy to" and "replace" from one site into another overwrites file without check out or evidence of versioning

Question

Hello -

I have a sharepoint document library where I require checkout's in order for documents to be edited. Check out controls work as intended when trying to edit the files/properties directly and uploads are prevented unless the document is checked out. However, I am able to use "copy to" and with the choice "replace" when prompted and the file is overwritten even when not checked out. The "modified date" does show a change, but the version history does not advance. This allows any new file versions to be copied in from other sites without capturing the versioning changes, overwriting the existing version instead of maintaining it as a previous version. Is this an issue or am I missing a setting somewhere?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi CLA_2112,

When you use Move to, the history of the document is copied to the new destination. When you use Copy to with documents that have version history, only the latest version is copied.

You may refer to this MS Knowledge article: Move or copy files in SharePoint - Microsoft Support

To copy earlier versions, you need to restore and copy each one. You may refer to this MS Knowledge article: Enable and configure versioning for a list or library - Microsoft Support

Additionally, when you Download then Upload file to SharePoint Document library with Replace option, it will keep all version history and treat it as a new file.

Best Regards,

Sophia

Answer 2

Hello Sophia

Thanks for that information, it is helpful to understand that this behavior is expected, however, I would still argue that "Copy To" should not completely remove the entire history of the file it is replacing without some sort of warning. The warning text in "replace" prompt does not distinguish whether the entire history will be replaced or just the current version will be replaced...the text is the same in the copy to and move to prompts. The upload prompt provides a little more detail as to what will happen, but the "replace" button still just shows a generic "replace" text.

The concern would be that for a typical user:

1. Users would not know (me being an example until now) or intuitively expect the "copy to" behavior to be different than the "Move to" and "Upload" when it comes to version history
2. Even if they are aware of the different behaviors, users may accidentally select "Copy To", click replace thinking "Move to" was selected

The other part to this is the fact that the target library in this example is setup to require check out and approval/reject before changes can be made as a safe guard to erroneous changes and the "copy to" function completely ignores those controls.

Since we are dealing with the entire history of the files, I would suggest there be a little more control in place to prevent the history from being deleted.

Thank you