Is there any limitation on the Lookup field if the list which is been referecned exceed certain number of items

john john 946 Reputation points
2021-09-09T19:23:56.887+00:00

I have a Parent SharePoint list which is been referenced by 2 lists using Lookup fields. now the parent SharePoint list has 174858++ items as follow:-

130857-174.png

and when i create new items inside the lists which reference the parent list i will get this message inside the lookup field, but i am still able to reference any item inside the 174858 items we have inside the parent list:-

130864-message.png

so what is the purpose of this message ? and what it is trying to say? does it say that if the Parent list exceeds certain number of items the lookup field will stop working? or the lookup field which reference the Parent items will keep working even if the Parent list got 1 or 2 million records?

can anyone advice on this? as our parent list is expected to reach 2 million records in 3-6 months.. so will the lookup field inside the lists which reference the Parent list stop working if the parent list reach certain number of items?

Second question,,, as our Parent list will grow to up to 2 million items.. then is it better if we replace the lookup fields which reference the Parent list, to be a Number field which just store the ID of the parent record? or using lookup fields will be fine even if they referecne large SharePoint lists (list with 2 million items for example)?

Thank

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  1. Yi Lu_MSFT 17,461 Reputation points
    2021-09-10T09:33:45.603+00:00

    Hi @john john
    I’m afraid this List View Lookup Threshold cannot be overcome in SharePoint Online.

    But you can add indexed columns to avoid the error message. The indexed column is to reduce the exact amount of items in the view, so you’d better make sure all views in that affected list has used indexed column and not to hit the limitation. For reference, please see Manage large lists and libraries in SharePoint.

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