SharePoint Online "Sorry, there was a problem uploading this file. Please try again."

Steel Contributor

Hi All,

Came across this today, wanted to document it, and would appreciate your suggestions.

Modern SharePoint online library, user drags and drops PPTX files into chrome or IE, to upload them. They upload fine (proving user and browser are OK to upload PPTX files to this library).

The user tries uploading a 290Mb PPTX file to the library with drag and drop and after about 1minute and 7Mb uploaded they get the following error in the SharePoint Online Modern, Progress fly out menu.

Sorry, there was a problem uploading this file. Pleast try again. [Retry]

 

Two other users, each on a different machine could upload files (drag and drop, IE or Chrome) larger than this. So the WebDav registry filesize and timeout limits weren't an issue.
When the other users tried to upload the same file the original user had trouble with they got the same error at the same point.

 

By trial and error we found that deleting one of several embeded videos from the PPTX file meant it could be uploaded.

 

Can anyone tell me how to figure out what it is about the offending video that has caused this, so I can educate our users to avoid this in future ?
My guess is that the codec used by this one video causes an issue with the drag and drop upload method. 

 

NOTE copying the problematic PPTX file from OneDrive to the SharePoint Online library, worked fine no errors. Hence I think the issue is with the technology involved in the drag and drop upload methodology.

1 Reply

Hi @Dorje McKinnon,

 

I have a similar issue. I have one team site sync'd via OneDrive for Business and another team site which we access via drag/drop or checkin/checkout/upload method (I'll call it the "non-sync'd" site). We started a large upload (197MB) on the non-sync'd site and it would fail with *any* activity (upload or download sync's) on my OneDrive for Business for the alternate team site with error "Sorry, there was a problem uploading this file. Please try again. [Retry]". 

 

I was able to recreate this several times on two different user accounts. My resolution was to not generate any file changes that would cause OneDrive for Business syncs and then hope that none of the other team members changed a file during the upload. It worked but we have a very small team so I was lucky.

 

Give it a try and see if you see something similar?

 

Cheers,

 

Trevor