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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 two files, the time is minimal. But in cases where larger file moves are taking place - the pace of transfer is painfully slow.
For example, today it took approx. 30 mins to transfer only 45.8 MB.
Earlier this month, an employee spent the entire day waiting for files to transfer, only for her computer to stop responding, and have to re-start the entire process the next day. On our previous server based environment, the same transfer would take less than 30 minutes.
Additionally, in some of these larger file moves, users have reported large losses of data. The files were moved, and confirmed, only to come in the next day and they have disappeared.
This issue is decreasing adoption and causing our IT team multiple headaches.
Any suggestions or helpful feedback?
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.
Hillary Barter Same issue with us. We have recently moved to SPoint and moving any files/folders more than around 100MB is painfully slow. Whether using ODFB sync client or the Web interface and choosing Move To or Copy To it makes no difference, it takes massively more time to complete the task than doing it on our file server. Using the web interface I have currently set a task to move folder containing 682MB of files, it has so far taken 45 minutes, and the progress indicator has been indicating 50% for the past 30 minutes. I suspect it may have stalled. But what logs can I check? There seems to be very little feedback to users in sharepoint.
- Seeing the same issue between SP and ODB. I'm trying to copy a folder with 1GB of mixed files (documents, video) and after 30min it is STILL showing 50%. Ridiculous. At this point even if I wanted to move these files to a more reliable cloud (like DropBox) I don't see how I could do it. Oh and I'm trying "copy" since when I earlier tried a move (with a much smaller folder) I was told "Done" but only TWO of the 8 files actually moved. Really Microsoft??
Hillary Barter we are having the same issues in the company I am currently working for. However, this painful process can happen with just one folder and/or file!
This happens with all the current browsers we have which are Internet Explorer, Google Chrome & Microsoft Edge.
I even recorded a video internally to show how ludicrous this is. It is something that seems to be an ongoing issue for many.
There is yet to be an actual solution. Using File Explorer to move files (as stated in "view best response") actually caused one drive to get stuck in a loop, the solution was to sign out and sign back in which then caused duplicate files to be made everywhere and it was an absolute headache to get everything back to normal.Hello ,
I mapped SharePoint site to my PC ,
I am trying to move a 10GB file from a SharePoint Site to another SharePoint site which has been mapped to my PC, I get an error message "error 0x800700DF:The file size exceeds the limit allowed and cannot be saved "
I have edited the registry to 4294967295 and restarted the Pc and the web client still the same error. when I navigate to the SharePoint online it gets stocked on 50% for hours .
Is there anything I can do move the file ?
Or is there a maximum file size of file I can move between sites ?
Thank you
Can you check the following:
1. Did you change the FileSizeLimitInBytes parameter to 4294967295? This is only 4 GB whereas you need at least 10 GB.
2. Are you moving the file within the same SharePoint system? or between SharePoint systems?
Note: that SharePoint 2013 has a 2 GB limit.
3. Are you able to download the 10 GB to your local computer?
4. How do you connect to SharePoint? via OneDrive client or File explorer or ...
Paul | SLIM Applications (https://www.slimapplications.com)- paul
1. I used the 4294967295 in the regedit
2. I am moving from a sharepoint online site to another site .
3. The sharepoint was connected using the file explorer , it was mapped like a network drive .
4
Hi Hillary,
I am assuming you are uploading files to SharePoint. In that case 46 MB in 30 mins is very slow.
Do you upload files via the browser or via explorer view?
Are the files very small (e.g. emails of a few kB each)?
Are you uploading files to a remote location (e.g. other continent) where network latency may negatively impact throughput?
What is a large file? is that 100 MB or several GB's?
ODFB is an option but it means you will have a local copy of the files which needs to be removed (in the proper way) at some point in time. In case you just want to upload files this is cumbersome.There are plenty of tools to help out. See e.g. https://directory.collab365.community/office365-sharepoint/office-365-migration-software/
My company has developed a browser-based solution (listed as SLIM Companion Migration Manager) to address upload issues by using parallel processes.
Paul (SLIM Applications)Hi Paul de Jong,
We actually arent uploading files to SharePoint - the users are moving files within SharePoint.
Currently our users prefer the "open in explorer" functionality - so they are copying files from one location to another in this setting. This is where all the slowness is occuring. I have tried to copy and move from the browser - same problem, slow pace.
File size varies, some of these data moves have hundreds of files with various sizes - it varies alot.
All files are being moved to the same company location (Vancouver, Canada) - not external.
Large file - good question - every data move is different, but on average the total size ranges from 45 MB to 256 MB and the largest I have seen is 1.86 GB (this size is extremely rare).
How does the one drive sync work exactly?
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.
Is this something which has only just start occurring? If so it could be local network/connection issues, or you can never rule out that it's something that's being worked on cloud-side.
Alternatively, if this is part of a migration effort then you could be being throttled, especially if you're firing a lot of content up at the same time.
I'd be thinking along the lines of jcgonzalezmartin in suggesting that your users exploit the OneDrive for Business Sync Client, so that the files can be uploading in the background while your users go about their daily routine.
Hi Matt Weston, No this has been ongoing since we transitionted to SharePoint online - not a new problem.
- Why don't they use the option to move files using the ODFB Sync client? I think the problem you are facing is due to the fact the Copy and Move function are not intended for doing massive Copy/Move operations
@Juan Carlos González Martín have you any updates about this discussion? It's really painfully when user copies documents and lost them. You say it's "Copy and Move function are not intended for doing massive Copy/Move operations" - i know the limits from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-limits , but we have the problem even with fewer and smaller documents.
We are having all the same problems. Moving large numbers of files between libraries in Sharepoint Online - even a few GBs - is painfully slow. Always surprised when functionality like this is so broken in a main product of one of the world's largest tech companies.
jcgonzalezmartin regardless of the intent from a programmatic point of view, there will always be cases where large numbers of files need to be moved as one action due to customer need.
I also have similar issues with files missing from time to time and would be interested to know if it is a common experience? How many times do files seem to disappear leaving only a folder tree?
R
RussellTMR Yes, had the same issue. One of my customer was moving between 2000, 3000 files from OneDrive to SharePoint and just some folders and a couple of files made it. Everything else was deleted. We needed to recover the files.
The copy/move functionnality is very weak and not serious for real business workload. Very disapointed.
Workaround (using OneDrive client) is not the answer. If the functionnality is not always working they must remove it or fix it. Period.
