SharePoint 2013 - Opening PDFs from Webdav (open with Explorer) sometimes fails

Question

Hi everyone,

for 1 month now some users complaining that it is not possible to open some PDFs from Webdav. After several tryouts it may work.

This i ruled out:

PDF Program (used Adobe Reader, Edge, Chrome) - same error. "File not found or Access denied"
Change in configuration - No changes on the IIS where made
Updates on SharePoint - we did not apply updates to SharePoint only OS updates
Lost or unstable connection to SharePoint - it works fine on the Web Interface
Unsupported Characters in filename

Can be:

Latest IE updates
OS Updates that interfere with IIS

Anyone can test this out or is having the same problems? We have PDF files from 9KB to 2MB - does not matter.

---

I have searched the logsfiles and came across this in the IIS logs - the client tries to authenticate itself with the computeraccount?!

2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP PROPFIND /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\myuseraccount myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 207 0 0 78
2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP GET /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\mycomputer$ myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 403 0 0 78
2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP GET /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\mycomputer$ myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 403 0 0 62
2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP GET /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\mycomputer$ myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 403 0 0 62
2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP GET /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\mycomputer$ myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 403 0 0 62
2020-08-11 05:08:33 FrontEndServerIP GET /places/SiteColl/Library/Folder/Folder/Filename-not-to-long.pdf.pdf - 443 0#.w|domain\mycomputer$ myvpnip Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/10.0.18363 - 403 0 0 125

Answer 1

Hi Trevor,
no it's a single extension.

The user drags and drops the PDF File directly from her Outlook to the SharePoint WebDav server
I now tried myself - if i upload it from Windows Explorer to Windows Explorer it works 9 out of 10.
If i drag and drop from Outlook it shows up instantly on the Webdav Server but cannot be opened/and found.

Must be a difference (if you or someone know - would be great to share)... i will create a Flow that saves all PDFs into her OneDrive and she can copy from there. It's a workaround

Answer 2

Just did a test on my end, and I canot reproduce your issue. Everything works well in my enviroment. I am using IE 10 mode.

Which IE version did you use? If you are using IE 11, you'd better revert to IE 10 mode. Because IE11 doesn’t work correctly with SharePoint 2013.

Answer 3

Another approach is to use apps that mimic File Explorer but are browser-based (e.g. here)

Users can then simply drag and drop emails and/or attachments (any file format) from Outlook into SharePoint.
NB: drag and drop from Outlook directly to SharePoint only works with Chrome and Edge browsers.

Paul