Known Issue - Metadata panel in Office is blank despite default values being set

This article provides additional detail to an ongoing known issue on Microsoft's side. We will continue to monitor this issue but it is not possible to fix from our side.

MSFT30827401 / CPZD2524

Issue Description

When trying to save to any SharePoint library (Atlas or not) from Microsoft Office desktop applications, the metadata panel will be blank instead of showing the default metadata set for the library.

The issue occurs specifically when one or more of the Managed Metadata columns from the content type does not have a default value in the library. For example, in Atlas we often recommend clients to avoid setting a default value for the Information Type to encourage the user to choose the correct tag themselves. In this case trying to upload documents directly from Office to Atlas will cause this issue.

Below you can see how this issue appears - the Atlas global metadata fields should have their default values populated but because Information Type has no default it breaks all other managed metadata fields in the form:

If there are no managed metadata columns or they ALL have default values, the issue will not occur. As noted earlier, this will occur for many libraries in Atlas workspaces due to their default configuration.

Workaround 1 - set default values for all columns

It may be workable in some scenarios to set default values in some libraries - or individual folders within libraries - to ensure this issue doesn't occur in those workspaces. If you intend to have your users regularly upload documents to a workspace from Office apps directly then it may be best to set up folders for each expected Information Type or Subject for example, and set corresponding default values so that users can work without experiencing this issue.

Workaround 2 - enter the metadata

Of course, if the user chooses the metadata tags for every field they can save the document, so although it is annoying it might be the easiest workaround in some scenarios where documents are not commonly uploaded via the Office apps.

Workaround 3 - use cloud apps

Although the cloud versions of the Office apps are by no means feature-complete, at the time of writing they do not experience this issue. You can access the cloud apps from the App Launcher in the top left of the M365 interface.