We are on SharePoint 2010, recently upgraded from MOSS. We have a document library that houses a large number of legal documents. Major versioning is enabled. When someone revises a document on their local hard drive, uploads the revision to the document library, marks the box to "add as a new version to existing files", any metadata that was previously entered is removed.

If I review the version history, I can see the metadata that was entered initially.

It does not make a difference if the revised document is version 2 or version 5. No metadata remains if uploading the document from ones local hard drive.

We do have Office Web Apps available. If the user revises the document utilizing Office Web Apps, the metadata remains intact.

This was not an issue with MOSS. Has anyone experienced this before?

Thanks,

Amy

Hi,

What version of Office are you using on your desktops, what type of docuements are you editing (doc or docx) and have you checke dthe Document Properties on the documentsb prior to uploadomng to ensure they contain the required metadata?

 

 

-Ivan 

Hi ,

 

What is your Office edition ?When we create a managed metadata column in a Document Library ,it will prompt that ‘Earlier versions of client programs might not support this type of column’ .You should use Office 2010 to edit and create a document then save to document library .

 

For detailed information ,please refer to this site:

Managed Metadata Columns in Office 2007 : https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/devwiki/articles/Pages/Managed-Metadata-Columns-in-Office-2007.aspx

 

Thanks,

Hi,

Their is one hidden list "TaxonomyHiddenList".All the metadata values come from that list.

What is happening actually,When you 1st version of  document is being uploaded and you assign certain metadata values to it ,It actually assigns a GUID of the metadata from that hidden list and even if you remove it from the second version after uploading it remains intact i guess as GUID doesnt get deleted.

I think it might be the case.

We are using Office 2010. The documents they are editing are .doc 

Ravi - If I am understanding correctly what you are explaining, doesn't that defeat the purpose of marking the box to "add a new version to existing files".

I have tested this in other document libraries in our environment and it is occuring in all of them.

If no one else is experiencing this issue I have to think it is specific to our environment.

 

Hi ,

 

As the managed metadata columns occurring properly on other libraries ,I would suggest taking these steps to have a test:

1.       Add a new managed metadata column to the document library which use the same term set as the missing managed metadata column.

2.       Repeat the revising process to have a test whether the column value still missing .

 

If the value will still missing ,please take the steps below:

1.        Delete the managed metadata column and save the  document library as template include content .

2.       Create a new document library using the template .

3.       Add a managed metadata column to the newly created library and add values to the column .

4.       Repeat revising process to have a test .

 

Thanks,

Hello Amy,

I have the similar issue: when I upload document in Sharepoint 2010 (first time) on the second screen I have to fill in mandatory fields in order to check document in. I save the these values and see version 1.0 for the uploaded document. Then I upload the same document to the same location and on the second screen I see mandatory fields pre-populated with values from version 1.0 (which is logical enough because Sharepoint understands that it is gonna be just another version of the same document). So it works like a charm.... ONLY FOR FILES with three letter extensions like .doc or .xls
For files with four letter extensions (like .docx or .xlsx) when you upload document second time all mandatory fields are empty...

Any ideas what it could be?

Thanks,
Alex

Hello Amy,

I have the similar issue: when I upload document in Sharepoint 2010 (first time) on the second screen I have to fill in mandatory fields in order to check document in. I save the these values and see version 1.0 for the uploaded document. Then I upload the same document to the same location and on the second screen I see mandatory fields pre-populated with values from version 1.0 (which is logical enough because Sharepoint understands that it is gonna be just another version of the same document). So it works like a charm.... ONLY FOR FILES with three letter extensions like .doc or .xls
For files with four letter extensions (like .docx or .xlsx) when you upload document second time all mandatory fields are empty...

Any ideas what it could be?

Thanks,
Alex

I have a feeling it is vice versa. For the ones (.docx / .xlsx) if you add metadata; you download the document and upload it back again you will notice the field values will be pre-populated and this is because of XML promotion and demotion. To verify this

Step 1: change the extension of your .docx or .xlsx to .zip

Step 2: Open the zip file and look for a folder customXml

Step 3: Open the folder and look for a file Item1.xml

When you open the file you will notice that the properties have the same values as were assigned when you first uploaded the document. This is the exact reason why you get the fields pre-populated once you upload this document. 

The above process is what is called as XML promotion and demotion.  Hope this gives you an idea on what this is. 

 

Note: The above steps won't be true for .doc or .xls, for these types of documents you will notice that fields are always empty. 

Did anyone ever found a workaround or solution for this?

My business is receiving around 250 docx documents at the end of each month and they need to upload them to SharePoint. All documents are updates to excisting documents that are already on SharePoint. After they are uploaded all meta data needs to be refilled. This was not the case in SharePoint 2007, so after migration to 2010 this has started.

We are having the same issue--any resolution? We receive updates to existing documents and have to merge, then accept all changes, in order to preserve metadata. So that's a workaround but it would be nice to have a fix!

We have had a call about this at Microsoft. They say this is by design and there is no plan to create a fix since at this moment only 8 customers had created a call about this. So it is very low on there list.

I have the same issue as Amy, uploading xlsx files the metadata is lost. If I save the same file as an xls and then upload, when I upload it a second time the metadata is pre-populated.

We are having contact with several Microsoft teams about this issue. Currently the conclusion from Microsoft is as follow:

• It is working in SP2007, but that was due to a bug and was not intended to work.
• It is not working in SP2010 and that is by design.
• It is not working in SP2013, but this is a bug. A bug report has been filled for this and it will be passed to the involved development team.

However we did some more tests on our SharePoint 2010 environment (DEV, QA, PRD) and we see very inconsistent behavior in keeping and losing the metadata. We managed to change the behavior of metadata in one site collection in our development environment from being removed to NOT being removed, by enabling the Document ID feature. This feature or a combination of this and other features, changes the expected behavior that you described.

Our tests imply that the behavior on the same platform, with the same patch level and the same features enabled isnt stable.

See our overview:

Currently we are waiting on a response from Microsoft, as we think this behavior shows that even if it was by design there is a bug in 2010.

We also noticed that this behavior was already reported to Microsoft in December 2011 and escalated all to the application team. See this blog post: http://bfgagliolo.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/sharepoint-2010-using-multi-file-upload-lost-metadata-on-office-2010-documents

Hi All,

If you download a document after its been uploaded and populated with metadata and modify this document then when you upload the document where you have made changes, the metadata will still be embedded in the document. However, if you take a document from another source where the metadata has not been embedded in the document (just check the document properties) then when you upload the new document as version 2 it will overwrite the existing document that had the metadata embedded in the document.

This is referred to as Property Demotion and Promotion

Property Demotion occurs when you download a document the metadata properties (site Columns) and metadata values (Site Column Content) are embedded in the Document.

Property Promotion occurs when you upload a document. If the document you are uploading does not have the same site columns (metadata properties) with the same content (metadata values) as the one you are over writing. The metadata from the document you are uploading as a new version is where the values will be promoted from to SharePoint.

-Ivan

I had a phone conversation with Microsoft today about our issue and our tests on SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013. Microsoft confirmed that the lose of meta data in SharePoint 2010 and 2013 due to property promotion is not by design, but that it is indeed a bug. Currently it has been escalated to the application team for SharePoint 2010 and the application team for SharePoint 2013. They should strat working on a fix, however they where not able yet to give a time frame for this bug.

Hi All,

This thread has been around a long time and probably has a couple of separate topics. You should start a new thread and explain your specific issue instead of declaring that you had a phone conversation without being specific about the version of office SharePoint you have in your environment. In addition to the information below if you have more than 256 Characters in a site column the metadata will not be stored in the properties of the document and will therefore be unavailable upon upload.

But lets start with Ruud's last answer.

Please be more specific and don't say I have the answer without describing the problem.

When did you lose the metadata on property promotion?

After you had downloaded a document and with the site columns filled in, the metadata properties and values existed, you made a few changes to the document and then uploaded the document to the same library and over wrote the existing document?

Did you down load a document from one library and upload to another library where the site columns were not the same.

Did you receive a third party document of the same name that doing contain any metadata and over wrote a document that did.

There is an issue with Office 2003 Documents but its not on the initial upload. After you have uploaded a document to SharePoint and added meta data, the next time you open an office 2003 document there is a chance that the metadata will be lost when re-saving the document back to SharePoint.

This is known issue and occurs because the meta data is not properly demoted into the properties of the document. Clearing the IE Cache can resolve the issue in some cases.

Office 2007 and greater is not affected by this because it does not use this method at all. In 2007, 2010, 2013 the document information panel uses InfoPath to render metadata

My original answer to this question in 2009: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/2b81ec06-b810-43f8-bac3-d63cac6a82ce/problem-with-metadata-going-missing-on-editing-an-excel-document-and-then-saving-it

Reference Paul Culmsee's Post: http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2009/09/05/missing-metadata-with-office-2003-yet-another-duh-moment/

I hope this helps and please let us know who you are spoke to at Microsoft and if you have an SRX Number associated so I can help you get the issue escalated: PLease let me know how I can help...

Cheers,

-Ivan

Well i don't think i have just stated i had the answer. That was a follow up for earlier posts about our issue. Exactly the same as the topic starter has. Having a document with meta data on SharePoint 2010, receiving a new from an external source and then losing the meta data when doing an upload. So why would i start a new thread if the issue is exactly the same?

But in case you want to know, here are all posts in the correct order and describing the problem and test results, where my end conclusion is. Microsoft has finally declared this is a bug and is working on it with currently no time frame available for when it will be ready.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:01 AM

Did anyone ever found a workaround or solution for this?

My business is receiving around 250 docx documents at the end of each month and they need to upload them to SharePoint. All documents are updates to excisting documents that are already on SharePoint. After they are uploaded all meta data needs to be refilled. This was not the case in SharePoint 2007, so after migration to 2010 this has started.

Friday, May 24, 2013 11:20 AM

We have had a call about this at Microsoft. They say this is by design and there is no plan to create a fix since at this moment only 8 customers had created a call about this. So it is very low on there list.

Thursday, June 27, 2013 9:54 AM

We are having contact with several Microsoft teams about this issue. Currently the conclusion from Microsoft is as follow:
It is working in SP2007, but that was due to a bug and was not intended to work.
It is not working in SP2010 and that is by design.
It is not working in SP2013, but this is a bug. A bug report has been filled for this and it will be passed to the involved development team.

However we did some more tests on our SharePoint 2010 environment (DEV, QA, PRD) and we see very inconsistent behavior in keeping and losing the metadata. We managed to change the behavior of metadata in one site collection in our development environment from being removed to NOT being removed, by enabling the Document ID feature. This feature or a combination of this and other features, changes the expected behavior that you described.

Our tests imply that the behavior on the same platform, with the same patch level and the same features enabled isnt stable.

See our overview:

Currently we are waiting on a response from Microsoft, as we think this behavior shows that even if it was by design there is a bug in 2010.

We also noticed that this behavior was already reported to Microsoft in December 2011 and escalated all to the application team. See this blog post:  http://bfgagliolo.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/sharepoint-2010-using-multi-file-upload-lost-metadata-on-office-2010-documents

Today

I had a phone conversation with Microsoft today about our issue and our tests on SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013. Microsoft confirmed that the lose of meta data in SharePoint 2010 and 2013 due to property promotion is not by design, but that it is indeed a bug. Currently it has been escalated to the application team for SharePoint 2010 and the application team for SharePoint 2013. They should strat working on a fix, however they where not able yet to give a time frame for this bug.

Hi Ruud,

Is there anywhere you can follow Microsoft on this bug?

No, Microsoft reproduced the issue, logged it as a bug, gave me the call back and now it is on there list. There is no further option to see how far they are with this bug.

Hi Ruud,

Do you have any update on this issue? We are working on SP13 on-prem installation and find the same issue.

We have reported this to microsoft support but no update from them yet!

Pls update for any info on this issue.

Dawood

Nope no updates from Microsoft if they ever going to fix this. However i am also intrested if this will be going to fixed for SP13 since we are planning a migration.

Thanks Rudd for your reply.

Its disappointing to hear Microsoft is not concerned on this issue...

Do you have the related Microsoft bug details? I need this to justify this issue to my management!

Thanks again.

Daw

I'm in the Army and our SharePoint server also causes this problem.  It worked fine for a little while after migration to 2010 and then started to be a problem about 4 months ago with only the newly created Libraries, the older ones were fine.  But now some of the older libraries are doing it as well.  Also, recently, even the initial upload drops the metadata.  It returns an error, that includes info that the newly uploaded document was modified.  The document shows up in the library, but without any entered metadata that was entered during the upload.

The type of document I'm working with primarily is an xfdl.  I tested the extension length by removing the L, resulting in xfd, and it keeps the metadata.  Problem with that fix is going around and teaching hundreds of people how to do that and undo it when the document is sent externally and the file association on hundreds of computers.

Hundreds of documents every month that we have to go re-enter the metadata, because each document has unique permissions, apllied by a workflow, based on the metadata.  This is a critical problem and would greatly appreciate Microsoft showing some fragment of concern.  A primary feature of SharePoint is the ability to utilize custom metadata to track, sort, and filter data, and use it inside workflows.

Below is a screenshot of the error window that pops when uploading new documents, as mentioned above.

  

Just wanted to chime in that this still exists in SP 2013 as o 4/22/2015.

Not sure why they would not treat the modern extensions the same way as the legacy 3 position extensions... no meta data in file...then assume meta data from current file stored in the library.

This has been an ongoing pain for us as it appears it is for others as well.

Any updates on this issue (i.e. is it really by design....or is it bug that just has never been fixed) would be appreciated.

Thanks.

It is by design. It isn't a bug. It won't be 'fixed'. It's an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem.

Hi All,

Only office files maintain the metadata while offline. You can upload html, htm, txt, zips, xmind, isim ccdx etc then add metadata, then download the file and the file will not have any metadata associated with the file, the file will NOT maintain the metadata in the offline file.

The reason is that Office documents have the values demoted into the custom properties of the document and they travel with the document.

One of the things yo have to get used to if building departmental templates is to inspect the document and remove all property values. Its kind of funny when one of the Sr. Business Mgrs has provided a template to his group of Supervisors and they have been using it for a while. We had a user where the title was template and when we did a search on any of the groups reports in SharePoint, the search results were all template, as the search result page displays title with a link to the doc and NOT the file name by default...

BTW its NOT referred to as XML promotion / demotion, its term is property promotion / demotion.

Properties are promoted to SharePoint on Upload and Demoted into the document on Download...

Bill Baer has a pretty easy to read post on document property promotion / demotion  http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2014/08/29/document-property-promotion-and-demotion-overview-and-considerations.aspxhttp://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2014/08/29/document-property-promotion-and-demotion-overview-and-considerations.aspx

Cheers,

Thanks Ivan.... exactly the detail I was hoping for as an answer.

The article that Bill wrote is indeed an easy read and provided a new understanding about these document types and their parsers and the lifecycle of them within SharePoint.

I think you can try Aceoffix.

Forced revision mode. Different modified revisions are displayed by different colors.

Revision can show who modified, when the file was modified and what was modified.

User can not accept, reject and delete other user's revisions.

With docFinalizeDraft mode user can check and clean up all the revisions in the document.