How to force images to update in SharePoint Online

February 17, 2021February 17, 2021Anthony

This is a quick tip for anyone who has noticed when they update images in modern SharePoint sites that they don’t seem to update.

I’ve recently been doing a lot more authoring/ page editing in modern SharePoint and a small quirk I have noticed is around images. Usually, if you update an image and overwrite the original a forced browser refresh (CTRL+F5) does the trick – the image will update to show the newest version.

The problem

I’ve been doing the exact same thing in a SharePoint communication site recently and noticed that the updated image would not display – no matter how many times I force refreshed the browser, no matter which browser I use (I flit between Chrome and Edge Chromium quite a lot). The image(s) were saved in the Site Assets Library, not weren’t checked out either so no reason why they would not display once overwritten.

*The image (product, right) doesn’t update to reflect the changes made in SharePoint.*

The solution

I’ve found a really simple way to get around this:

Right-click on the image > Open the image in a new tab
Force refresh (CTRL + F5) the image in a new tab
Navigate back to the SharePoint communication site > force refresh (CTRL + F5) again
The image will now be displayed as expected

*Opening the image in a new tab or window then force refreshing will update the image on the SharePoint page.*

If anyone else has come across this issue, or found any other ways to solve it – let me know in the comments!

Julie July 14, 2022 / 10:42 pm

I tried your trick and was hoping it would solve, but the old images continues to remain. Are you still running into this or have learning anything new?

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- Anthony July 15, 2022 / 5:27 am
  
  Hi, thanks for the comment! For me this still gets round the issue and I know others left comments to say it worked for them too. Have you tried browsing the images in incognito mode or in private browsing to see if they update?
  
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  - Julie July 20, 2022 / 5:27 pm
    
    I have. It seems like on the homepage it take about 24 hours for the image to be fully replaced.
    
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Hector July 9, 2021 / 3:53 pm

That works for the people who knows the trick
but is there a way to make sharepoint do it by itself?

I mean, it is not a practical solution because the audience of the site won’t know when someone made an update and they will not be doing that trick all the time.

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- Anthony July 9, 2021 / 2:55 pm
  
  Hi Hector, I would say it’s more of an issue for SharePoint Online than something we the consumers need to figure out a way around, this was purely to document how I forced images to refresh when observing they weren’t updating.
  
  Thanks,
  Anthony
  
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Osman April 29, 2021 / 2:37 pm

Thank you! I wasted hours on this issue.

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- Anthony April 29, 2021 / 1:41 pm
  
  Same! Glad to hear it’s helped someone else
  
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