SharePoint Online PDF Viewer changed and performs very slowly now

Anonymous
2024-04-11T19:26:20+00:00

Hello,

Our users noticed a change when viewing PDFs in their SharePoint Online document library. Occurred Monday 4/8/24.

They have it set up where when you click on the document from the library, it brings it up with the SharePoint Online PDF Viewer, it does not open in a new tab, and that's the way we prefer. With the viewer, you can click on the info button to bring up the info pane on the right, and you can edit your metadata from there.

They noticed several things.

-The background is now black, like in a dark mode, thats what initially tipped them off that something has changed.

-The info button is no longer available, it is now buried in the ... menu on the top left.

-It is now EXTERMELY slow to load. When they click on the next arrow to view the next PDF, it is very slow to load and also the info pane is very slow to load.

-When they filter or sort the library, and then start viewing the PDFs, it does not bring them up in the same order as the filter/sort. It's completely different.

I as the IT admin, have tried many things to improve performance, here's some notes.

-Not everyone has this new viewer experience. The older experience has a white background, and also the info button. See screenshots to see the difference.

-I am able to reproduce the slowness on other test pcs, though there are a few that seem to load fine.

-I have cleared browser cache, cookies

-Tried with different user accounts

-Tried with private browsers, and tried with Edge Firefox, and Chrome.

-Tried using a hotspot to be on a different network

I have opened up a ticket to Microsoft, but no response yet. I have also not seen any announcement of this change.

Has anyone else noticed this? Any workarounds or suggestions? Any way to roll back to the old viewer? (wishful thinking). I'm wondering if laptop specs are factoring in, which would surprise me because it's basically just web browsing here.

Thanks!
nick

Microsoft 365 and Office | SharePoint | For business | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-06-24T20:35:18+00:00

    Hi guys,

    having the same issues as you describe here ... and pretty frustrated after discussing with MS support since several weeks ... and getting asked for more logfiles every day ... TrackingID#2405311420001773

    Seems the support team has never heard of a roll out of a new version.

    Problem 1: the info button is the most used button ... and not visible in the main menu any more

    Problem 2: performance

    Problem 3: when pressing "edit all" our corporate Power App doesn't open any more ... which makes our entire Sharepoint Workflow completely useless!

    And the most critical problem:

    The "black" update was installed user by user in our company without getting asked and without control for me as an Admin ... and nobody can tell me how to switch off the new black version immediately as is blocks our company since several weeks!

    @Emanuele happy to get a super fast solution on this! How can we switch off the black "beta" version immediately?

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-06-04T18:54:51+00:00

    Hello Chris,

    Thank you for raising this concern. We are actively investigating the issue. Currently, a workaround is to close the file viewer and open the Detail pane in OneDrive Web or SharePoint Online. While this solution is not ideal, I wanted to offer an option.

    Best,

    Emanuele

    Hi Emanuele,

    Thank you for offering the workaround. Circling back in on the missing SharePoint metadata in the info pane when special characters are used in the filename. Do you know if this is still being investigated or if a fix is in the solution that will soon be released to all users today (June 4)?

    Thank you,

    Chris Ficek

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-20T19:05:11+00:00

    Here is some more information for everyone. A product announcement on this written by the product manager for One Drive. I suggest doing support tickets and commenting here and tagging him (and anyone else from MS). I am getting nothing from support so far. I think people may need to get loud on this one to get any movement.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/introducing-new-capabilities-for-file-viewer-in-microsoft-365/ba-p/4089244

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-08T07:02:03+00:00

    Hello, do you have a solution for this issue? We're having a problem with the custom form in PowerApps; it's not displaying

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