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Tutorial: Manage version history limits for a site, library, or OneDrive account

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In this tutorial, you will learn how to manage the version history limits for a site, document library, or OneDrive account. You will learn how to:

  • Set Version history limits settings on the site.
  • Stop an in-progress settings update job.

Before you begin

  • Review your organization’s recovery objectives and version storage use quota targets along with the site-specific version storage needs to evaluate if a break of inheritance of version settings at site, library, or OneDrive account level is needed.

  • If needed run an impact analysis with the desired setting, to understand the impact the new setting would have using current version storage usage patterns.

  • For setting site level version limits, evaluate the scope of document libraries that should be updated. Depending on business need, you can choose one of the following:

    • Update new libraries only without impacting existing library settings.
    • Update existing libraries only and inherit organization default settings for new libraries.
    • Update both existing and all new libraries for consistent version storage at the site level.

Set version limits for a site

You can set version limits on a site by running the Set-SPOSite command to break inheritance from the organization version history limits.

  • Use the –ApplyToNewDocumentLibraries parameter to apply the changes only to new libraries created in the site.

  • Use the –ApplyToExistingDocumentLibraries to only update the Version history limits on existing libraries on a site. Any new library created inherits the default organization limits.

Example: Apply automatic version history limits to all document libraries on a site

Run the following commands to apply Automatic setting to all document libraries on a site.

Set-SPOSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 -EnableAutoExpirationVersionTrim $true

Example: Apply automatic version history limits to new document libraries on a site

In the following example, Automatic Version history limits are applied to all new document libraries created on the site. The settings on existing libraries will not be impacted.

 Set-SPOSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 -EnableAutoExpirationVersionTrim $true -ApplyToNewDocumentLibraries

Example: Apply manual setting with count and time version history limits to existing libraries only on a site

In the following example, Version history limits of all existing libraries on a site are updated to Manual Version history limits.

Set-SPOSite -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 -EnableAutoExpirationVersionTrim $false -MajorVersionLimit 500 -ExpireVersionsAfterDays 30 -ApplyToExistingDocumentLibraries

Cancel an in-progress request to update version history limits on existing libraries

If required, you can cancel the update job that is currently <InProgress> using the Remove-SPOSiteVersionPolicyJob.

Note

Cancelling the job doesn't revert the change for document libraries where the update is already processed.

In the example below, the in-progress job to update settings on site will be stopped.

Remove-SPOSiteVersionPolicyJob -Identity https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/site1

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