Forum Discussion
Hillary Barter
Aug 27, 2018Copper Contributor
Moving or Copying Files: Painfully Slow, Loss of Data
Hello All! Our company transitioned over to SharePoint Online about a year ago. One of the largest complaints I have to date, is the time it takes to move or copy files. In cases of one or t...
- Aug 28, 2018
If you're using "Open in Explorer" I think that may be part of the issue, and I'm assuming that you're using Internet Explorer. From personal experience I never really got on with the piece of functionality. It worked well back in 2007 when I first used it, but now there are much better options available.
Option 1 - Move To
When you visit a document library in the modern experience, you can click on the ellipsis against the document and select move to (see attachment "Modern-MoveTo.docx". In Figure 1, you can see the option to move to, and then in Figure 2 you can see that you have a number of options to either move it to OneDrive for Business or to another SharePoint site. When I tested this with a document of approx 1mb it took about 5 seconds to get itself warmed up and then do the move.
Option 2 - OneDrive Sync
The alternative option which has been mentioned before is to use sync (see attachment Modern-Sync.docx). In Figure 1, you can see the ability to Sync your library to your local file system using the OneDrive Sync Client. By hitting the sync button, you'll see it connect to your sync client (Figure 2), and then it will be available from your Windows Explorer windows (Figure 3). Once it's been synced, you can copy and paste documents between synced libraries in the same way as you would with normal files. Again this took only a few seconds to copy, paste and sync between the libraries.
I hope this approaches are useful and that they work. If not, please let us know and we'll see what else we can come up with.
KarlInOz1
May 13, 2020Copper Contributor
OK but what I have found is, if you choose to "Always keep on this device" then at least the document Origin and Content details do come across as unchanged:
So I guess MSs answer would be something like Oh yes, this is intended behaviour, isn't it beautiful?! They would see it as no problem at all because all you have to do is to choose "Keep on this device" for all your files. Like everyone is going to rush to do that.
So I just had the thought that M$ want us to use the web interface to get file details (and therefore possibly access the details via PowerShell) but looking at the file details via the web interface is woeful:
Those two panels there are the sum total of the details you get on a file. Maybe we have access to the document metrics via PowerShell. I haven't tried that.
kvaden357
Sep 24, 2020Brass Contributor
KarlInOz1 RE: if you choose to "Always keep on this device" then at least the document Origin and Content details do come across as unchanged:
Yeah, I found out the same thing, as monthly or so I am trying to relocate large media files off of SP storage and move them over to ODFB storage.
First step is to sync a SP location (which goes somewhere on, but not in, my ODFB), wait for that...doesn't take long since it just builds the structure/stubs. Then I mark a group of those files "Always...", then wait until they sync down. Then I copy those to the target ODFB location, wait for that to complete. Then I go back to the synced ODFB and "Free up space" on the SP files, wait for that to complete. Then finally delete the SP files (stubs) from my synced ODFB location which removes them from SP.
RPITA