Column values are retained when saving Office documents to a different library

Description

Microsoft Office documents uploaded to SharePoint Online document libraries will sometimes retain metadata values provided by SharePoint fields inside the document itself. This can mean that when uploading the document to a different library, the default values on the new library are not applied because the document already has values populated.

You can see these values in your Office document by going to File > Info then looking at the Properties section on the right hand side. For example here, the fields highlighted in red are additional fields provided by an Atlas document library in SharePoint Online:

When we download the document these fields are retained in the file itself, and therefore not overwritten by new default values when uploaded to a different library.

Steps to reproduce

• You create a Microsoft Office document and you save it into an Atlas or SharePoint Online document library e.g. "Library A". On upload, the document gets assigned the default metadata values for that location.
• Download the document, make some minor changes in Office and load it into a different Atlas or SharePoint Online document library "Library B" with different default metadata values.

In this scenario, the document properties will be retained on the download from "Library A" and they will persist when uploaded into “Library B” rather than getting the default values from "Library B" that would be expected.

Workaround

When uploading a document to SharePoint Online that was previously downloaded from another library, you should check the metadata applied to the document in the new location is correct.

In Atlas libraries there is almost always some default metadata applied - usually at a minimum the Location and Department in every Atlas library. Therefore at a minimum you should verify these fields when uploading the document to a new library.