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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
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Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Also on it with Microsoft support.
We are at the stage where we had to send log files etc...
fingers crossed
Hey all, just an update.
I opened up a support ticket on the same day as I reported the issue here, and there has not been much progress. We did a screen share and they gathered logs. I showed them examples of machines running slow on the new experience, and also of machines running fast on the new experience. Since then, our ticket has been escalated, but every update since then has been that they are still investigating.
We're a small company so I suggest for others to submit their own ticket to support so we can keep pushing MS for some answers. I'll keep you all updated if I hear anything. Thanks!
Nick
Same for my organization too, more and more users are reporting to me that this is changing. first the speed issue is terrible, but the worst is that the view they are in, which has all their pdfs that they have to work on, keeps reverting back to a default view when opening each pdf. meaning that they have to close go back to their working view, and open the next pdf in line.
This started on one client PC a couple of weeks back and I have been trying to pin down the cause. It is now happening on more users and on different Microsoft Orgs.
Clicking on the 3 dots top left of new black display and hitting "info" does display the metadata as the i button used to and you can cycle through using the left right arrows in the display body (this didn't work initially but is now thank god).
If you filter and then open previews do not hit the X to close the preview as you will lose the filters, hit the browser back button instead and the filter list will still be there.
I did try a support call with Microsoft but we can not work out what element is changing. Is a Windows issue, SharePoint, MIcrosoft Edge, Microsoft 365? Can anyone help in this regard and I will open another support call in the correct area.
It certainly sync's across with users profiles so reinstalling windows doesn't help.
I have upvoted your feedback and will ask clients to do so.
We are having the same issue, any resolutions or workarounds? Also we have an issue where the PDF preview is just the title bar.