Workaround for the Stream web part indexing bug in SharePoint online
A tale of folders, libraries, and indexing limits.
Introduction
The newest edition of the Stream web part has been available for quite some time in SharePoint online, it’s rather simple to use and there are multiple options to display videos with it on the page. The Stream web part allows you to embed videos from any location in SharePoint or OneDrive. You can choose to display videos from a channel, a group, or a folder on a site. Usually, it works like a charm, but if your source video library is too packed, you might run into this problem.
Operating the Stream web part is easy: just choose the content source and then navigate your way into the correct folder or playlist.
The problem
When adding the Stream web part to a SharePoint site, you choose the source library or a playlist for your videos. If you choose a folder (from any site) in a library that has more than 5000 files (which is the index limit for SharePoint online), you will get an error message in the Stream web part saying "There are too many items to be searched right now. Try indexing the list or changing your view. Learn more.” Now, the Learn more link only takes you to the Microsoft Support article describing how to manage large lists or libraries in SharePoint, which doesn’t really fix the problem.
Indexing error that shouldn’t really be a problem.
What does this mean? It means that the Stream web part Folder view cannot handle libraries that have more than 5000 files, even if the folder view you select has fewer items than that. It doesn’t matter which file types the items are, only the number of them counts. It seems that the Stream web part tries to query the whole library, not just the folder you selected, and hits the indexing limit. This clearly is a bug, but luckily, there is a workaround.
The workaround
The workaround is simple: move (and please, do not copy) the videos to another library that has fewer than 5000 files. You can create a new library just for the videos or use an existing one that isn’t as jam-packed. Then, edit the Stream web part and select the new library and folder as the source. The web part should work as expected and display the videos without any errors.
Of course, this is not a perfect solution. You might have to reorganize your files and folders and update any links or permissions that you have set up. You might also have to do this every time you add new videos to your site. But at least you can make the Stream web part work and show your videos to your audience.
In the long run, you might want to consider using some kind of retention policy to do a regular spring cleaning to your files, but that’s another story 😉
Conclusion
I’ve reported the bug to Microsoft and let’s hope they’ll fix it soon. I will update this post if it happens. In the meantime, I hope that this post helps you to work around the bug and continue to entertain your audience with videos on your SharePoint pages.