Introduction
If you experience any issues with the Documents app or tile, this article provides various troubleshooting tips to help you resolve the issue.
Note that this article is specifically aimed at issues with SharePoint sites. For issues with file servers added via WebDAV we have a separate support article.
Quick Wins
If you’re experiencing issues with the Documents app or tile, make sure to verify the following things first:
Check the Microsoft 365 Service health center for possible issues with SharePoint Online
If the entire app is missing, make sure the Documents app is activated in the App store under Manage apps
Also check Who has access to verify the user has access to the app
If a site is missing, log in with an admin that has access to the site and verify if it’s showing under Settings > Integrations > SharePoint documents > Site availability. If not, follow step 3 listed here.
The list of sites shown under Site availability is based on the permissions of the admin account you’re logged in with, so we recommend doing this with an admin that has access to all sites
Users must have at least Read permissions (avoid ‘Contribute’ permissions) on a site’s entire hierarchy path for the workspace to show it, from the root URL to the document library
To find the root URL, navigate to the SharePoint admin center > Active sites and sort URL from “A to Z”, the root URL will be shown at the top
If users are assigned direct permissions on an item via sharing but do not otherwise have access to the item, they will only be able to access it via ‘Shared With me’
Under Settings > Integrations > Sharepoint documents, ensure the root URL is set correctly, this must be the format https://companyname.sharepoint.com
There is a difference between how Classic and Modern SharePoint sites affect the Documents app in Workspace 365:
We recommend using Modern sites with the faster loading experience enabled
If you use Classic SharePoint sites, we recommend disabling the faster loading experience
Site or document library is missing or empty
It may happen that a SharePoint site is missing or empty in the Documents app. This can be caused by various things, follow the troubleshooting steps below in order.
From the user’s session, click the ellipses in the Documents app and choose Manage to verify the site is not hidden by accident.
There can be a number of causes depending on how the site was created:
Sites created via the SharePoint Admin Center: should generally appear in 20 minutes.
Classic sites: disable the faster loading experience.
Teams sites:
Make sure that Site Owners are also Site Members, users who are only Owners will not see the site.
It can take up to 24 hours for Teams sites to appear after creation.
Sometimes detecting a Teams site can be forced by going to the Files section of the created Teams site, but this is not guaranteed to work.
Note that Private channels will show as a separate site in the Documents app.
As a workspace admin, go to Settings > Integrations > Sharepoint documents > Site availability and verify the site is shown there.
If the site is not shown there, it means it’s not retrieved from SharePoint Online and cannot be shown in the Documents app for end users. Sites under Site availability are listed based on the permissions of the admin that you are signed in with. Click Refresh to renew the list of sites.
As the user that does not see the site, navigate to the SharePoint root URL and run the following search query via the search bar to verify if the site can be found:
"STS_Site" AND webtemplate<>"SPSPERS"Site not listed? Then it’s not being indexed by SharePoint search, meaning the workspace cannot list the site.
Site listed? Make sure the user has the correct permissions for the site.
User must have at least Read permissions on the whole path.
Check the permissions under Advanced permissions > Check permissions.
Avoid Contribute permissions.
Verify the users is added to the Site Members group rather than the Members group, otherwise the site may not show. This happens to Private group sites in particular.
From the Documents app, click the ellipses then choose Refresh to refresh the app’s cache.
You can use the SharePoint API from Microsoft Graph Explorer to check which sites are available to you as an administrator, or a specific signed-in user.
If the site is still missing after 24 hours, contact support.
OneDrive ('My Documents' and/or 'Shared with me') is missing
‘My Documents’ and ‘Shared with me’ are part of OneDrive. If a user’s OneDrive is not appearing in the Documents app, there are two possible causes:
Incorrect SharePoint URL configured:
As an admin, navigate to Settings > Integrations > SharePoint documents.
Verify you have the correct SharePoint URL configured. This should have the format https://companyname.sharepoint.com. If you have https://companyname-my.sharepoint.com, then SharePoint will be shown but “My Documents” will not.
OneDrive may not have been provisioned:
Verify that the user’s OneDrive has been provisioned.
Check if the user has signed in to OneDrive, and verify that the same user is signed into the workspace.
Create a test file in the user’s OneDrive.
From the Documents app, click the ellipses then choose Refresh to refresh the app’s cache.
If OneDrive is still missing from the Documents app, contact support.
Only the 'Recycle bin' is shown
When a SharePoint site is only showing the ‘Recycle bin’ in the Documents app:
Navigate to Settings > Integrations > SharePoint documents as an admin and disable the faster loading experience
If step 1 does not work, check the Microsoft 365 Service health center for possible issues with SharePoint Online
If the steps above do not help, contact support
A site name is not up to date in the Documents app
When a site name is changed, the name change may not be reflected in the Documents app compared to SharePoint Online. In most cases, this is a matter of waiting until the workspace has retrieved the latest information from SharePoint. Alternatively, you can try the steps below:
If it is a Classic site, disable the faster loading experience.
Use the SharePoint API to check the site name in the Microsoft Graph Explorer. If the site name is not up to date in the MS Graph Explorer, Workspace will not be updated with the new names either.
Re-index the site manually.
From the Documents app, click the ellipses then choose Refresh to refresh the app’s cache.
If site names are still not up to date after 24 hours, contact support.
Unable to retrieve items (Failed to load documents)
This error occurs when a folder in the SharePoint library has more than 5000 items. SharePoint has an item list threshold of 5000 items, when this threshold is exceeded the workspace cannot display the folder’s content. This is a limitation from SharePoint.
The only solution to this is to clean up or reorganize the folder to ensure it contains less than 5000 items. Review the recommendations, techniques, and tips outlined in Manage large lists and libraries in SharePoint:
Cannot load site contents after changing SharePoint root URL
We advise against changing the SharePoint root URL. Be advised that if the steps described below do not work, it is a matter of waiting for Microsoft to process the changes in SharePoint, and no further actions can be done from the Workspace side.
Disable the faster loading experience.
Disable and enable the SharePoint integration.
Remove the SharePoint API permissions from the SSO app registration, then add them again:
Files.ReadWrite.All
Sites.FullControl.All
After re-adding the SharePoint API permissions, re-index the sites giving issues.
Two weeks after disabling the faster loading experience, enable it again.
User gets an error when trying to open the Documents app
There’s a few possible causes for this issue:
Verify that the user has access to the Documents app via the App store.
If the user has access to the Documents app, there are two other possibilities; an incorrect SharePoint root URL or missing API permissions.
Check the Root URL: as an admin, go to Settings > Integrations > SharePoint documents. The root URL may be set to a format such as companyname-admin-my.sharepoint.com, this will not work. Enter the correct root URL as the Company's SharePoint URL, it should have the format https://companyname.sharepoint.com
Check API permissions in Azure. Verify if the necessary Microsoft Graph permissions are assigned to the SSO App Registration of Workspace 365.
File couldn’t be found
When a file name has been changed and a user tries to open the file afterwards, the workspace may still search for the old file name. This will result in the error “file couldn’t be found”.
To resolve this, refresh the page manually, this will process the name change and allow you to open to file.
Error 500 when opening a PDF file.
When you try to open a PDF file, you get an error 500. This is caused by a (Conditional Access) policy blocking file downloads.
To resolve this, go to Settings > Integrations > SharePoint and check the “Open PDF and text files in SharePoint file viewer” checkbox.
Why does it take long to open the Documents app?
This is usually caused by the faster loading experience being disabled. We recommend enabling this under Settings > Integrations > SharePoint documents if you use Modern SharePoint sites.
As of Workspace 365 v4.13, the faster loading experience has been improved. In the new implementation, we only load the sidebar content visible to the end user. This means that the content of a collapsed site will be loaded when the site is expanded. In the previous implementation, all sites were being loaded at once when opening the app. The new approach increases the loading experience and reliability.
Why does it sometimes take long to copy/move folders?
Actions like copying/moving are performed in the background. The end result is not visible until after the browser page has been refreshed. The workspace does not do this automatically as this may cause performance issues.
How long this background operation takes depends on how many actions need to be completed. Generally coping/moving should finish within 10 to 15 seconds, afterwards the user should refresh the page.