Sharerpoint Online File Viewer web part not working for some users

Jim Blanchard 1 Reputation point
2021-11-30T13:49:38.383+00:00

My users are reporting a peculiar issue. I say ‘my users’ because it has never happened to me.

First of all, we are all using Office 365, Sharepoint Online and regular Windows Updates are pushed to users weekly. We should all be using the same version of Windows, Office and web browsers.

Now that that’s out of the way, this is what happens:

We have modern Sharepoint pages which display a PDF in a File Viewer web part and looks like this:
153670-pic1.jpg

If the PDF is tall or multiple pages, you can scroll it using the scroll bar or a wheel mouse. Easy-peasy , works in both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

Now here’s the problem: Dozens of people are reporting that they can’t scroll the PDF.
153687-pic2.jpg

It’s like the page doesn’t fully load or come into focus. I’ve talked to a few of them to:
• make sure they bring the web part into focus by mouse-over or clicking the File Viewer window
• try a different browser
But it still doesn’t work for them.

As a work around, we’ve added this link in a Text web part to point directly to the PDF in question:
153678-pic3.jpg

The text link does work for them, so it isn’t a permission issue in the document library. Like I said, it has never happened to me in either modern browser.
I just tried it in Internet Explorer 11 and Safari on my very old Mac. It works properly there too.

Oh, forgot to mention. I have a FireFox user who complained about her site pages not showing her PDFs properly in a File Viewer web part. I asked her to try Chrome or Edge. She said those browsers didn’t display the page properly either. It seems that if a user experiences this problem, it will happen in all their browsers. It almost looks like a permissions issue, but in this case she is the Site Owner, so she has Full permissions to her site.

The first complaints came in over the summer, so several months ago. If it was a Sharepoint issue with the File Viewer web part, I would think it would be all over the internet by now.

I have no idea what it could be. Do you have any ideas?

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  1. Yi Lu_MSFT 17,606 Reputation points
    2021-12-02T09:15:47.777+00:00

    Hi @Jim Blanchard
    I could not reproduce this issue as well, and I agree that it seems like that the page doesn’t fully load or come into focus.

    So, to make a troubleshoot, please try to use browser in privacy mode or clean the browser cache.


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