Uploading files with the same name

Question

I'm trying to use SP to basically create a simple document management system.  Users will upload documents that will likely all have the same name but the meta data will be different.  I've built my app in SP online through my Office 365 E3 subscription but I'm finding that SP complains when I try to upload a doc with a name that already exists.  This is contradictory to everything I've read about SP as you're supposed to throw out your preconceived notions of file storage and directory hierarchy and use meta data instead.  I feel like I'm doing that but ironically SP is enforcing arcane file name restrictions that are completely irrelevant.  Am I missing something?  Who cares what the filename is.  It's looking like SP is nothing more than a fancy UI on top of a traditional filesystem. 

The only workaround I've found is to use the Content Organizer feature and have people submit files to the drop off library and set the option to append random characters to duplicate files.  Problem with that is it adds several extra steps as the user needs to upload the file, select it, hit edit all properties, click submit, go to the actual app, find the item and fill out the metdata fields.  That's ridiculous.  Is there no way just to upload the file directly to the app and be prompted to fill out the metadata fields?

I'm doing all this to replace an ancient DMS that does all this 100x easier, it's going to be a hard sell to migrate to SP if we need to jump through these hoops.

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

like the file system, you can not put two files with the same name in one folder location.

You can ask users to upload the file to their own folders.

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顺其自然地勇往直前！—Justin Liu

Answer 2

Hi,

Like Justin said, you are unable to put two files with same name in the same folder location. When you upload a file which has a same name with an existing file in the location, you need to replace the existing document with the new document, otherwise, you are unable to upload the new document. It is By Default.

For your situation, you can use different folders for different users to upload file as Justin mentioned.

Or, to achieve documents better, you can use Content Organizer to rout documents to different locations.

Thank,

Wendy

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Answer 3

Thanks for your replies but once again your suggestions are completely contrary to everything I read about SP, especially when used as a DMS/CMS.  Everything states that if your design involves having to create folders you are likely doing something horribly wrong, you should be using metadata fields instead, which is what I'm trying to do.  Even if I followed your suggestion it wouldn't work since the same person would likely be uploading multiple files per day with the same name that all need to be separate items.  Any legitimate CMS cares only about metadata fields and would not enforce arbitrary restrictions on filenames, which is a property of absolutely no value to a CMS.

The comparison of SP to a traditional file system also makes no sense as again everything about SP says you should throw out traditional thinking of file storage and file server shares.  I'm just baffled that there's no way to turn off the requirement for unique filenames as I can imagine plenty of scenarios where that requirement would be a deal breaker.  Some preliminary research before I posted this question seems to reveal there are lots of people in my same situation.

Thanks again for the replies, but unless anyone else can chime in I think I'll have to dump SP and stick with my 20 year old solution which works fine but is not as accessible as a modern web-based platform.  Or if anyone can suggest a product more capable than SP I'd be open to that.

Answer 4

Hi Todd- not that you care, but the reason why you can't is because each item has to have a unique URL. If you had two items with the exact URL, how would the browser know which one to show you? Contrary to your beliefs on CMS, this is normal, correct and necessary.

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cameron rautmann

Answer 5

I'm not trying to be nasty, I really do think this is a serious, arbitrary limitation and if there's no way around it I hope MS makes plans to adjust down the road.  As stated, this seems to have been a well-known problem for several years impacting the way many people use (or subsequently don't use) SP.

I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that the filename needs to be unique to facilitate a URL.  There could be any other form on unique name/key/index/GUID applied to each item to serve this purpose.  The use of the filename is arbitrary and limiting.  It's a throwback to the traditional filesystem days, which as stated before, is ironic.

As a developer I spent over 2 years building a custom CMS geared towards policy and procedure and it had no such limitation.  (And yes, each document could be linked to directly).

I don't know why I'm getting push back on this idea.  I understand that what I'm trying to do is not possible in the current iteration of SP, but can't we at least agree it would be nice if it could?  My original intention of this post was to get the latest information on this issue to see if it's something that's been addressed in a recent update I'm unaware of, it seems that's not the case.  The second intention is that MS or somebody with influence sees this and makes it a priority to change down the road and better their product. 

Answer 6

This isn't something that will be adjusted. It's core to the product dating back to when SharePoint was Tahoe. And while your correct in the concepts of what you suggest, it's such a fundamental change to the product that it is not something that's going to be pursued as the investment in attempting to do so would be significant (not to mention the regression testing involved).

Obviously it would be 'nice' to be able to do this, but SharePoint was designed to have a file system that (as close as possible) mimicked NTFS.

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Trevor Seward

Office Servers and Services MVP

Author, Deploying SharePoint 2016

This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.

Answer 7

OK fair enough, I understand that making a change that's apparently as deep rooted as this one, especially in a product that's been around as long as SP, would be daunting to the point of not being worth it.

I have an alternative suggestion... Modify the upload routine to randomly assign a filename to files uploaded, make this feature optional.  This should perfectly solve my problem as I don't give two hoots what the filename is and should adhere to your core requirements.  And I can't imagine this would be difficult to do.  Actually, I've built several file uploader routines and can tell you it wouldn't be difficult :)  In my research for a fix to this I think I ran across some posts where people were doing just this - hacking apart the upload.aspx file on their on-premise installations to get around this issue.  I'd happily do that if it's the only way but I'm a SP online customer so it's not an option.

You're kind of doing this with the Content Organizer feature that I mentioned in my original post, but as stated going that route adds several unnecessary steps to the process.  Actually, the "new look" has added several more steps over even the "classic view".

Just trying to help

Answer 8

You could accomplish what you're asking for with an ItemAdding event receiver on the library.

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Trevor Seward

Office Servers and Services MVP

Author, Deploying SharePoint 2016

This post is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or view of Microsoft, its employees, or other MVPs.

Answer 9

Thanks Trevor, I'll look into that option.