SharePoint Online - Cannot move folder to a different site

Kimberly Roetman I was able to work around this by syncing my account with the OneDrive client but then adding the destination as a OneDrive shortcut which then shows up under My Files when I went to move from the source. Shortcuts show up with the link icon 

Kimberly Roetman I have gotten around this, by synchronising the site(s) and using Windows File Explorer to move the files/folders. The main limitation to this is how much physical drive you have for the move, you need double the size of the content to be moved. I will explain by way of our own current situation.

Our College's very old Dell Hyperserver storage system had been haemorrhaging and throwing larger quantities of warning of potential failure though most of 2020. So we took the leap and have/are moving everything to SharePoint. The Photo Archive alone is about 2Tb spanning back to 2009 with more than 450,000 files+folders.

I started laying out the individual year using the SharePoint Photo Library App(s). However, they end up as individual Libraries with no association to the default Document Library, which after uploading a couple of years (2020-2019) the leadership team decide don't want, but want ALL the folders structured in the Document Library. Hence, possibly the same/similar situation you are in. Each year's content is about 160Gb to 250Gb of average 30+ thousand files/images, mostly high resolution images.

I struggle to move very small quantities of files (less than 1500 files) within SharePoint Online. Therefore, I have found it easier to sync the SharePoint Libraries to my computer and use Windows file explorer.

There are limitation and minor consequences.

1.  Try not to move more 30,000 files at a time (I have had dropouts doing more and becomes another pain to work out where I'm up to).
2. As mentioned earlier you need twice the size you are moving, because everything become "Always keep on this device" for both locations. Your computer literally download and then uploads the entire content, wait for the entire 'batch' process to complete.
3. Hence, this will take a significant amount to time, especially to re-upload. I have a remote laptop plugged directly into that same switch our Fibre optic comes into the premises. (and I'm moving into week 3 of this project, with the laptop running 24/7. Only 3 more year of content to go, yeah....).
4. With the computer downloading then uploading the content, it also in between deletes the content from the old Library structure on SharePoint and SharePoint registers the deletion in both the Recycling Bin and the Retention policy (if you have it switched on), which may impact on your Site overall storage capacity. After moving 163Gb of the year 2020 content, the Site thought it had about 500Gb of content somewhere on the site.
5. A final suggestion especially if you are low on drive space, is to periodically "Free up Space" from the target Library. Wait for this process to completely finish before doing the next batch. Otherwise, (and you also may get this occasionally anyway), will get a SharePoint/OneDrive cache error that will require a "chkdsk /f /r" to correct (I have only had 3 in all the 2 weeks so far).

As you can see it very doable, just very resource and time-consuming.

Apologies for the long-winded explanation. 

Just chiming in here, was also waiting for the 11th to see whether the problem would be resolved... unfortunately it isn't. Thanks for the workaround developerds!

Kimberly Roetman 

I am another user who has been experiencing this problem. I can confirm the files I'm trying to move are to and from places that did not experience this behaviour last year, and that they are well within the published limits. I waited until today to see if the hotfix mentioned in earlier replies (for the 11th) changed anything but today the behaviour is the same for me.

I'm replying here also because today I found a workaround for myself, which may be useful to others.

Given that there are often multiple ways to do the exact same thing, I thought I'd try some. Surprisingly I had success with using the OneDrive web client! In the web client, I navigated to relevant SharePoint site using the "Shared Libraries" section on the main left navigation pane (which I actually hate even exists - but that's another thing altogether). This opens up what I see as "SharePoint lite" i.e. a files only view. Once you select a library the interface is then basically identical to SharePoint modern library view. The critical difference is the "Move" function actually worked for me.

Hopefully this helps someone.

Kimberly Roetman Hi Kimberly, MS support contacted me today, they are working on the issue and promise to fix it on the next week.

It's a bug and as they say about 100 tenants are affected. I have this problem in both my tenants so I'm double lucky to be in top 100 😄

Has anyone heard back from Microsoft yet? I have a client suffering with this today. 

I can put in a support request, but just wanted to check any other responses first.

Thanks!

Kimberly Roetman 

Same issue here.  Any updates from your side?

Kimberly Roetman same thing just happened to me. I copy a synced backup of our student management database to a different library in the same site every Wednesday morning and have been for 2 years now, until today. The files are around 7GB and several sub-folders. If I have to copy smaller subsets that's going to be a pain. I just tried copying one of the smaller folders and it brings up the usual panel on the right. So now I'll have to create a bunch of folders first then copy the larger folders several bits at a time. I'm going to raise a support request.