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
    2024-06-07T19:14:07+00:00

    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

    It looks like we received a fix for the issues with the SharePoint metadata not appearing in the info pane when a filename contains special character(s) today. The fix may have reached your tenant but if you are still seeing the issue, try ctrl + F5 or clearing the browser cache; or close out all the browser sessions and start a new one. Hope this helps.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-06-05T07:38:32+00:00

    Hi everyone,

    I would like to know if anyone facing this PDF viewer issue also noticed that Power Apps forms stopped working correctly. Any insights or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-31T16:24:06+00:00

    Hi Emanuele,

    Is there a way to disable the People view functionality at the tenant level, site level or per file?

    This is a serious confidentiality issue in some scenarios.

    Thanks,

    Julien

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-31T04:24:37+00:00

    We implemented a code fix that should address this problem. The solution will reach all users by June 4th, let us know if you still have that issue after that.

    Best regards,

    Emanuele

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-30T20:30:58+00:00

    For anyone else who finds this, after a few weeks I have been informed by tier 2 Microsoft Support that there is no support available from Microsoft Development. Instead, they pointed me to the feedback portal and said that is the best course of action if Microsoft Development releases anything broken is to leave a message there. There is no guarantee that it will be addressed or read. There will be no information given or follow up for this issue according to Microsoft Support. My ticket was closed.

    Here is the link

    Ideas · Community (microsoft.com)

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