SharePoint 2013: Browse and Upload Multiple Documents Missing

SharePoint 2013 introduced new features with more user-friendly User Interface. But Maybe it’s not true for ‘Multiple Documents upload’. SharePoint 2013 deprecated upload multiple files with ‘file upload control’ as described in the Microsoft Support page. Let’s take a look what it was in SharePoint 2010 and what’s we’re missing in SharePoint 2013.

SharePoint 2010 – Upload Multiple Documents Dialog

In SharePoint 2010, we are familiar with the following multiple upload control as shown below:

Image 1: SharePoint 2010 - Upload Multiple File

The ‘Upload Multiple Documents’ option in SharePoint 2010 allows to drag and drop files but there’s also an option to browse files as shown below:

Image 2: SharePoint 2010 ‘Upload Multiple Documents’ dialog with browse file option
The ‘Browse for files instead’ option (as shown in the Image 2 above) would be last resort for users – where drag and drop would not work. But this option is missing now in SharePoint 2013.

SharePoint 2013 – Multiple Documents Upload Options

As described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2761257/en-us, users have the two following options in SharePoint 2013 to upload multiple files:

• Windows Explorer View
• Drag-n-Drop

The following image shows how the new ‘upload document’ ribbon control in SharePoint 2013 looks now:

Image 3: Upload ribbon button in SharePoint 2013


With ‘browse multiple files and upload’ deprecated in SharePoint 2013, Drag And Drop is the only way of uploading multiple files inside browser. Unfortunately the drag and drop will only work with IE9 (and later versions of IE) but not in IE8. Also some users might find drag-n-drop a bit difficult to deal with (need to open windows explorer, select the files, drag the files in Internet explorer and in a particular section).

So what options left for users who are using IE8? They can use other browsers like Chrome, FireFox etc. (nice way of using non-IE for browsing SharePoint) for drag and drop. Otherwise they can use Windows Explorer View. However Windows Explorer view may need minor configuration in users’ computers and might not work for Office 365. There’s no official explanation of why the ‘browse and upload multiple documents’ option is removed from SharePoint 2013 in the Microsoft Support page.

It’s really disappointing to see the upload multiple files through file upload control gone in SharePoint 2013. Users who are using SharePoint 2013 and IE8, as well as they don’t have windows explorer view configured, they have only one option of using non-IE browsers. Also some users might find drag and drop a bit difficult to use. And Microsoft didn’t leave any choice for them.