SOLVED

Channel rename - files tab becoming unlinked ?

Brass Contributor

I'm wondering if other people might have seen this issue and know how to solve it:

 

We're seeing a problem that after many months of renaming a channel that a new folder is created, and the files tab is linked to this new folder, appearing to users that all files have disappeared but they haven't as its just pointing to a different folder in the document library

So our experience is:
Originally we created a team and created some channels:

clipboard_image_0.png

 

Then some of the channels were renamed,  resulting in the files tab being linked to the original channel name folder in SharePoint (as per the known issues ) this is known behavior.

 

clipboard_image_1.png

 

This has been working 100% fine for over a year like this... but suddenly this week we are seeing that the links are being broken and the user who clicks on the files tab ends up creating a new folder with the channel name ?

clipboard_image_2.png
So now we're in the position where by we have 2 folders in the SharePoint document library, The files tab pointing to the new folder (with no files in it) and the old folder with all the files in.

clipboard_image_3.png

 

If we scroll up and look at historical conversations in the channel then the files that were uploaded link to their correct (old) folder location.


Any suggestions ?

6 Replies
best response confirmed by Iain Fielding (Brass Contributor)
Solution
Literally had this conversation with a colleague in the last 20 mins.

We found the fix is to:

1. Delete the newly created folder in SharePoint

2. Rename the old folder to the current channel name

Yup, as Rob said, you can't change the folders on the back end or it will just create a new folder. Renaming channels in Teams will still use the old folder name.

This is a long standing bug, that I don't understand why it has not been fixed, but it's been a thing for years now. They said they were finally working on it some months ago, but haven't heard of an update. Hopefully before too long the link between SharePoint folders and Team channel names will be fixed.
In our case today, which matches that seen by Iain, we found that a user accessed the Files tab in the channel in Teams as normal - but randomly it decided to create a new folder, and connect Teams to that, rather than access the existing one.

The existing folder was still there, hadn't been renamed, or permissions changed, etc.

@Iain FieldingYea, we literally just ran into this problem this week as well.  I renamed a couple channels in one of our Teams a few months ago.  This week the files and folders in one of the changed channels just "disappeared."  As you say, they were still there in SPO in the original folder but not in the Teams folder.  Interestingly, at the same time I also had a problem when I created a "test" folder in that same channel.  The "test" folder didn't show up in SPO or in Teams Online for quite some time.  I'm not sure if it was a caching issue or some sort of other online issue.  I was trying so many different things I forget what actually got the "test" folder to show up in SPO.

 

In your experience, is the solution to move the files from the old named folder in SPO to the new named folder in SPO, outside of Teams?  In other words, don't rely to much on Teams for heavy file manipulation tasks (moves, deletes, adds of large amounts of files and folders).

 

My other thought, in terms of a solution, is to try to copy the conversations (perhaps to a PDF file) then move all the files and folders to a "safe location.  After that I'd delete the entire channel and make a completely new channel with a slightly different name.  Then I'd move the files back into that channel.

 

I know, lots of work for a work around, but you got to do what you do. 

 

Thanks for any feedback.

When I tried renaming the Old folder to the new/current channel name it didn't work. The Old folder kept reverting to the Old name. In other words, the system kept changing the folder name back again.
I found another discussion thread and someone posted that "That issue was discussed in this thread: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Issues-changing-channel-name-OneDrive-folder/... "
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Iain Fielding (Brass Contributor)
Solution
Literally had this conversation with a colleague in the last 20 mins.

We found the fix is to:

1. Delete the newly created folder in SharePoint

2. Rename the old folder to the current channel name

View solution in original post