diff --git a/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/CHANGELOG.md b/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/CHANGELOG.md
index edd8ea1f8005..074c71ee389d 100644
--- a/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 ### Bugs Fixed
 - MLClient.from_config can now find the default config.json on Compute Instance when running sample notebooks.
 - Adjust registry experimental tags and imports to avoid warning printouts for unrelated operations.
+- Prevent registering an already existing environment that references conda file.
 
 ### Other Changes
 
diff --git a/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/azure/ai/ml/entities/_assets/environment.py b/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/azure/ai/ml/entities/_assets/environment.py
index d5d5c4c6a8f0..aeff4fb29284 100644
--- a/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/azure/ai/ml/entities/_assets/environment.py
+++ b/sdk/ml/azure-ai-ml/azure/ai/ml/entities/_assets/environment.py
@@ -232,6 +232,7 @@ def _from_rest_object(cls, env_rest_object: EnvironmentVersionData) -> "Environm
         if rest_env_version.conda_file:
             translated_conda_file = yaml.safe_load(rest_env_version.conda_file)
             environment.conda_file = translated_conda_file
+            environment._translated_conda_file = rest_env_version.conda_file
 
         return environment