In this post we look at a behaviour of document libraries in SharePoint that shows items as loading, and how to fix it.
The problem
I recently came across something I hadn’t seen before in SharePoint Online when working with document libraries. I was in a library that had more than 30 folders within it, and after the 30th folder the library just displays a sort of pulsing, loading screen similar to the below:
The thing is that nothing actually loads, there is no pagination or way to move to to see any more results, any additional files/ folders or basically any way to navigate further. I decided to dig into this to understand what was causing it and what can be done to resolve.
The solution
I found that the issue related to a view setting within the document library. The default view had an item limit set to “limit the total number of items returned to the specified amount”. Changing this effectively solved the problem, as once changed items are displayed in groups of 30, but a “show all” button will appear that allows you to see all the files/ folders. Here’s how to get to the item limit setting and update it:
- Open the affecting document library > press the cog > library settings > more library settings.
- Scroll down to views > select the default view.
- Scroll down and expand item limit.
- Change the radio button setting to display items in batches of the specified size.
- Press OK.
Things to note
- The number of items to display doesn’t have any bearing on modern views. In the screenshot above I’d changed mine to 100 items to display, but after the first 30 files/ folders, the show all button appears.
- The show all button is problematic as if you are grouping within your view, when pressed it will apply an empty filter automatically – showing no files and ultimately confusing people. I’ve wrote about this in detail here.
SharePoint Stuff 