Ultimate guide to SharePoint size and usage limitations

SharePoint size and usage limitations
If there's one affair all SharePointers have to keep in mind, information technology's the limits of the tool you lot're using. Some of these can exist abrasive, though most of them won't bother you… for the most role.

That is until you discover their existence, seemingly correct when you're trying to stop a project, go it shared, or demand to submit work. Knowing these limitations ahead of fourth dimension can really keep you out of a jam in the hereafter. And if yous get hitting with i of these limits when it matters, you lot'll remember it forever. Instead, why non only call up the golden rule: check before y'all do it. SharePoint isn't space.

Allow me to repeat that:

usage limitations - SharePoint isn't infinite

SharePoint isn't infinite

Different systems accept dissimilar limits, but defaults are generally similar or the same. Your It department may alter some of these values, and then you lot always want to be certain yous know what'southward been put in place in your environment, lest you lot detect out—again, too late in the game—that the limits I mention hither aren't actually what have been put in place for y'all.

(Virtually of the limits can be restricted further by your Information technology grouping—i.due east., not expanded—so if they make changes, it's usually non in your favor.)

Microsoft provides a ridiculously in-depth list of their limits, only it's a very overwhelming resource and almost the entire article is irrelevant to the everyday user. So I went through and cherry-picked the ones that really could have an impact on you day-to-day.

Or at to the lowest degree on that day when y'all might hit the limit, but, in fact, practisenon, considering you lot remembered a good nugget you saw in this post. Considering you're a good, conscientious SharePointer, of course!

One final, friendly reminder:

Code values warning

Code values warning

Types of limits

Microsoft defines 3 types of limits inside SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online:

Microsoft defines three types of limits within SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online

Microsoft defines three types of limits inside SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online

I disagree (respectfully, I guess) that three definitions are required, considering thresholds and supported limits are roughly the aforementioned affair. Here's how I translate these definitions:

  • Boundaries: These are difficult limits that cannot be changed past you, your site owner, or your IT organization. Merely how hard of a limit depends on which type of SharePoint arrangement your IT department has implemented:
    • On-premises SharePoint 2013: If your company uses SharePoint 2013 on their own servers, patches and updates to SharePoint may support improvements in these limits, but a full version upgrade of your arrangement (east.g., SP2010 to SP2013) is commonly required to gain nearly of the major limit improvements.
    • SharePoint Online: If you're using SharePoint Online in Office 365, improvements on these limits tin come up about whenever Microsoft decides to take action on them. Kind of like if you lot take a Gmail account, your quota is sometimes increased because Google wants to stay competitive in the amount of space they provide their users. So smile, you could come to work some Mon morning with a lot more than space.
  • Thresholds and supported limits: Both are suggested limits that can be changed or surpassed, but values put in place are recommended based on Microsoft testing. You want to break the limit? Have your chances on performance. The limits are based on the ability for SharePoint to perform a given action (due east.g., you can upload a 2-GB file—SharePoint'due south absurd with it—but it takes a long time and yous could experience a browser timeout error during information technology, making the limit a practical ane, and not even one that SharePoint tin always command) or limit performance bug on the user side of things (e.g., having tens of millions of files in one document library will affect how chop-chop that library loads whenever you open up it).

Sometimes I think the recommendation provided by Microsoft isn't so much nigh their testing as their ability to cover their ain… well, you lot know what. Redmond prefers to be safe rather than sorry. Information technology likely protects them from legal action from customers. Not that anyone would ever sue Microsoft, of form.

SharePoint 2013 versus SharePoint Online

Beginning, if you lot're not articulate on the difference between SharePoint and Office 365, kindly review my primer here. It will help you to understand how these limits impact you.

If your employer uses SharePoint 2013 on its own server system, the limits you'll experience are likely going to be static throughout much of its lifespan, until the system is upgraded to SharePoint 2016 or yous migrate to SharePoint Online as a part of an Part 365 migration/upgrade. SharePoint requires routine updates, commonly every quarter, and your IT department probable installs them behind the scenes without your knowledge. Unfortunately those step increases usually do not back up improvements similar you get with a total-on version upgrade.

However, SharePoint Online—considering information technology's run and operated by Microsoft and updates tin can be rapidly rolled out—volition sometimes benefit from functioning and feature upgrades as Microsoft improves the production and rolls out smaller, more targeted releases than what we've been used to with the every-three-year release of SharePoint on-bounds (SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016… meet the blueprint?).

That means if you have Function 365 with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, you can really see a benefit when information technology comes to feature upgrades occurring in a timelier fashion than having to wait for your IT department to upgrade SharePoint, which, although every three years sounds proficient, sometimes takes as long as two release cycles to actually happen depending on your IT department. For instance, your visitor may exist on SharePoint 2007 and so long that they skip SharePoint 2010 and go straight to SharePoint 2013, which can exist a welcomed relief for ability users, but ways you lot're stuck with 2007 features for far too long.

SharePoint Online is a better selection when information technology comes to getting feature upgrades, just it likewise ways y'all have to stay on height of the changes by following the Microsoft and SharePoint blogs and then you know about these improvements and, unfortunately, feature degradation or removal, which tin seem to happen correct nether your anxiety.

Site collections and sites

All SharePoint sites are office of a family of sites called a site collection. A site collection is normally created by your IT department. Child, grandchild, not bad-grandchild, etc. sites within that site collection (think of them like branches on a single tree) are sometimes created by Information technology and sometimes by any user that needs ane. It depends entirely on the rules your Information technology department gear up.

Site Collections Graphic

Site Collections Graphic

IT can create a multitude of site collections. Unremarkably they designate one to each organization in your visitor (e.g., section, geographic office, that kind of thing). Planning these out ahead of fourth dimension is an example of a smart information architecture (IA), which, while not exactly something you may call up nigh on a daily basis, actually impacts how you find what you lot're looking for and ultimately get your work done. A practiced IA is one you lot don't find… considering it just makes sense.

Site collections and sites are different things and work in different means. As such, they have different limits.

Microsoft recommends that site collections should not:

  1. Contain more than 250,000 sites (supported), which, for the record, is a mind-blowingly big number;
  2. Contain more than:
    1. 100 GB of information (relatively small considering the number of sites it can support) in SharePoint 2013; or
    2. 25 TB of data in SharePoint Online (default starts at 1 GB and so you have to asking an increment from your IT ambassador; this changed from 1 TB in September 2016);
  3. Have more than 2 million users (supported), which is, again, a huge number (and probably only important to IT since they likely command who users are);
  4. Accept more than five,000 users in a SharePoint grouping (supported), which is actually somewhat contradictory to the last detail; and
  5. Utilize more than 10,000 SharePoint groups.

These are non boundaries (i.east., hard limits). If y'all decide to break these limits, performance and fill-in operations could be negatively affected, says Redmond.

No explicit limits are mentioned for individual sites except that SharePoint pages are limited to 25 web parts (threshold). This was surprising to me because I've built pages that probably come close to that number. In that location are definitely cases where 25 web parts may exist warranted. And so keep this one in heed if yous're a heavy user of many web parts on your SharePoint pages.

That said, each site in a site collectionshares the size resourceof the unabridged site collection. That means an exceedingly big site could be "stealing" space from other sites in that collection. I've seen this happen in practise and it's not pretty. Particularly because many times the site owners of the "competing" sites don't fifty-fifty know the other exists until they find out the other is hogging infinite. So, don't be that guy/gal.

There are just two solutions to this problem: ane) delete content or ii) movement a site (either the offending site or a victim site). Both options suck. A lot. Nobody likes to review content and delete it. And the data move tin can be a nightmare if you don't have an expensive third-political party tool to brand the migration. Even if yous do, they can even so be complicated.

Document libraries

A document library is like a super binder in the eyes of SharePoint. Information technology supports version history, customized metadata (e.g., categories and the similar), a binder structure, and other tools. It's where you likely spend most of your time when you're creating, editing, and deleting files that live in SharePoint. A site owner can create a ton of libraries in any given site.

Microsoft recommends that:

  1. Document libraries should not contain more than 30,000,000 documents (supported). That's an insanely big corporeality. You can get larger than this amount, but Microsoft doesn't recommend it.
  2. By default the file size limit is set at:
    1. SharePoint 2013: 250 MB (supported), though your Information technology department can increase that to a hard maximum of ii GB (boundary). Only that 2-GB value is an absolute maximum. Unlike the 30,000,000 suggested limit in a higher place, the 2 GB file size can be very limiting at times, specially if we're talking multimedia and video.
    2. Sharepoint 2016: 2 GB (supported), though your IT department can increment that to a hard maximum of x GB (boundary). Just that 10-GB value is an accented maximum.
    3. SharePoint Online: ten GB (boundary), only if you drag-and-drop the file. Other upload methods (e.chiliad., the "upload" button) are express to 2 GB.

File and binder names have the following character limits:

  1. File names are express to 128 characters in SP2013 (boundary) and 256 characters in SPO (boundary).
  2. Folder names are express to 256 characters.
  3. Most chiefly, the combination of folder path plusfile name is limited to 260 characters. These are all boundaries (i.due east., difficult limits).Exist careful of nested folders! This tin can really bite you in the rear!
    (Note: the source for this limit is based on a SP 2010 commodity, but from research, it appears no changes occurred in the SP2013/SPO release.)

Okay, so why does this concluding detail matter? Because people honey folders. For some reason, a seemingly endless tree of folders appears to really bring warmth to the hearts of far too many people. And that can lead to a reallybad 24-hour interval for you lot if you lot do. Why?

Remember about this case: a binder tree that has the following structure…

  • Finance Section Almanac Budget for 2016
    • Supporting Documentation for 2016 Budget
      • Initial 2016 Budget Typhoon for Executive Committee Review
        • Upkeep 2016 Draft Documents Signed Off for Sharing Internally
          • Marys Initial Comments on Budget
            • InitialDocumentReviewForSignOffFollowingCFOReview-Mary.docx

This won't open up correctly in your browser in one case yous scan to the deepest levels. It totals 261 characters, which breaks the 260-character limit.

If yous think that binder structure seems insane, good. At present look around at your colleagues. Most of them won't. Trust me. This happensall the time.

Next, version history supports up to 400,000 major versions (supported) and 511 pocket-sized versions (boundary). Both of these numbers are insanely high. Y'all can read my full coverage of version history in this blog post.

When co-authoring on documents, Microsoft recommends no more than 10 concurrent editors (threshold) be working at ane time in any single Discussion document or PowerPoint presentation. However, up to 99 people can exist working at the same time (boundary). Microsoft mentions that performance could become an outcome. But c'mon… clearly it's going to come down to logistics: imagine even a dozen people editing one document at the same fourth dimension. If you lot don't run into edit conflicts all over, yous've encountered a miracle.

Lastly, views in SharePoint are limited to 5,000 items. That includes files and folders. So, while y'all can have 30,000,000 documents in a library, you can onlydisplay upwards to five,000 of them (or folders they're living in) in any view. This is unequivocally SharePoint'due south Achilles heel, known in the business as the List View Threshold. And if yous don't know about it, be sure to Google it. The Internet will exist happy to let you in on this little turd. It may non seem like a big bargain; it very probable will be for y'all one twenty-four hour period.

Social tools in SharePoint

Delve (Office 365) contour photos are best uploaded at 96×96 pixels. SP2013 suggests 300×300 pixels, but there is a known consequence with the photos that are uploaded: they become blurry. Regardless, a square crop is e'er the all-time thought.

Newsfeed posts are limited to 512 characters. (Not quite Twitter, not quite Facebook.) Images are set to 300 × 300 pixels, even if they start out larger. Each post tin have a maximum of 100 replies.

Interestingly, if you're using a web log site, at that place's a limit of v,000 posts per blog and i,000 comments per web log postal service. The documentation says this is a supported limit, so it technically tin can go higher, but their use of "maximum number" in the description makes me think it's more of a boundary. No word on whether this has an identical impact on your My Site blog. I presume it does, merely there'due south no explicit argument on that. Larn more about blogging at work—and why information technology's a good thing both for y'all and your employer—in my by web log mail service.

Additionally, you can follow upward to 400,000 "things" in SharePoint, whether information technology'southward a colleague, a document, a site, a list particular, what have y'all. That's a lot of things. If y'all're worried about hitting that number, information technology may be time to rethink how you lot do piece of work.

Office 365 Video Portal file size

Equally of February 2016, the maximum video size yous tin upload to the Office 365 video portal is 10 GB. The video portal is essentially a glorified library, so it plays past the aforementioned rules as document libraries, for the near part.

Notably, the 10-GB limit is a five-fold increase from the previous boundary (hard limit) of 2 GB. (Which, for the record, was a ridiculously small limit for video files, even though I realize SharePoint doesn't intendance whether the file is a space-hogging multimedia type or typically minor certificate.)

Conclusion

SharePoint can exist handy and exercise a lot of things. Merely like whatsoever production out there, it has its limits. And sometimes those limits are exceedingly annoying, especially when you're used to having fewer of those limits in products similar Google Bulldoze and DropBox.

That said, the limits won't carp yous if you know what they are, or at least think to check here kickoff before you go off and do something foolish like create a 15-folder deep folder structure to business firm that one document you justknow needs to get at that place. Just hey, that's none of my business.

References
icansharepoint. (2016). Ultimate guide to SharePoint size and usage limitations – icansharepoint. [online] Available at: http://icansharepoint.com/ultimate-guide-to-sharepoint-size-and-usage-limitations/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2017].

Reproduced under permission from Matt Wade

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