How to Fix the Broken Filter Pane in SharePoint Online

(Quick Fix Answer: Clear the Browsing Data manually.)

What Happened: I broke the Broken Filter Pane in SharePoint Online. I was resizing the Filter Pane and when dragging it to the right of the screen I dragged past the vertical scroll bar. At first I could retrieve the Pane by waiting until the cursor turned into a horizontal arrow… but eventually (I believe when the page refreshed) I could no longer get the mouse to see the edge of the pane and recover it.

Need to See What I’m Talking About?

Watch the video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM5V9bfwO0c]

 

How did I get myself in this situation?

I received a comment with a question on my blog post from February 2017 called “Using the Filter Pane in a Modern SharePoint Library in SharePoint Online”

“Did you know you can drag the vertical divider between the filter pane and the records you’re viewing to resize the filter pane? I dragged it all the way to the right to hide the filter pane. Now I can’t drag it back. And when I click the Filter pane button, nothing happens. Well, it’s clear that it’s trying to toggle the filter pane to be visible, but it can’t, since I dragged the divider bar all the way to the right. Do you know of any way to re-set it?” – Bur Davis

I was curious so I tried to duplicate their error. I couldn’t get it to break… until it did. I started trying to fix it and posting updates in the comment as I got more perplexed:

“[Update 1] Ok, now mine is broken too! Grrr…. I’m going to escalate to my SharePoint team to see what they suggest. If you’ve figured out a solution please, let me know!
[Update 2] And it’s broken across all the SharePoint sites I open… The temporary workaround is to use a different browser. I switched to Edge (from Chrome) temporarily until I find a fix.
[Update 3] Ok, new workaround. Use Incognito mode in Chrome… and the Filter pane is NOT stuck. Empty Cache and Hard Reload didn’t fix it. Strange. I might have to blow away this profile. #notawesome
[Update 4] Ok, no need to blog away the profile. The fix is to: manually Clear the Browsing Data. #phew 
-Kelly”

What Did Not Work:

• Soft Refresh – Using CTRL + F5 to do a simple force cache refresh. Didn’t work.
• Hard Reload – Using F12 + right click on Refresh button and selecting “Empty Cache and Hard Reload.” Didn’t work.

What Did Work: Clear the cache by hand.

Step-by-Step Instructions: How to Clear the Browsing Data Manually

1. In Chrome Browser click on three dots button to open menu.
2. Click on History button.
3. Click on History open in fly out menu.
4. Click on Clear browsing data.
5. Select “the beginning of time” from drop-down menu.
   • Make sure the following four options are selected: Browsing history, download history, cookies and other site and plugin data, and cached images and files.
   • You do not need to select Passwords. (Woo hoo!)
6. Clear browsing data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**** Kudos to Sean Wallbridge for giving me a hand. ****