Manage Version History

Hi Deeksha,

Thank you kindly for your reply. By some miracle I was able to meander my way into what I think is the settings I need. Again, I am on a Mac.

In Browser:

1. I click into my OneDrive
2. Click the Gear in the top right
3. Select OneDrive Settings
4. Select More Settings
5. Select Storage metrics under Features and Storage
6. Click the gear in the top right
7. Click Site libraries and lists under Site Administration
8. Select Customize "Documents"
9. Select version Settings

Finally I made it to where I can select:

Keep the following number of major versions!!!!

But!!! I cannot enter less the 100 VERSIONS! I get a message saying it needs to be a value between 100 and 50000!!!

My soul hurts.

Agreed, my soul hurts as well. Who decided that 100 is a good minimum value. Put that back to 1 and let the business decide whats appropriate for their business. You can still default it to 100 or whatever makes you happy Microsoft. Microsoft made a unilateral decision for all businesses. We now have custom power shell scripts that have to regularly purge files due to this asinine decision. There's also no easy way to do this in power automate that I could find. Microsoft, you don't need to make this stuff hard... Put the power in the hands of the consumer.

Hi, thank you for reaching out. My name is Deeksha and I'm a Microsoft user like yourself and I will try to help you as best as I can today.

Step 1: Access OneDrive Online Open a web browser and go to the OneDrive website. Log in with your work account credentials.

Step 2: Access Versioning Settings (Admin Only) To change the versioning settings in OneDrive for Business, you generally need to have administrative permissions. If you do, follow these steps: Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner to open Settings. Select OneDrive settings, then navigate to More settings. Under More settings, go to Versioning settings. If you're not an admin, you won't see the option to change versioning settings. You'll need to ask your OneDrive admin to adjust these settings or to grant you the permissions to do so.

Step 3: Modify Versioning Settings If you have access to the versioning settings: In the Document Version History section, you can change the number of versions to keep. For example, you can reduce it to the last 10 versions or even less. After making changes, click OK or Save to apply them.

Step 4: Manually Delete Old Versions (Non-Admins) If you don't have admin access and need to free up space immediately, you'll need to manually delete old versions: Navigate to the file for which you want to delete old versions. Right-click on the file and select Version history. You can see all the versions there. Next to each version, there should be an ellipsis (...) or a down arrow that you can click on to get the option to Delete.

Additional Considerations: Back Up Important Files: Before deleting versions, ensure that you have backups of all important files. Bulk Deletion: As of now, bulk deletion of file versions isn't natively supported in OneDrive for Business. This process is typically done one file at a time, which can be quite tedious with large files. Request Feature Improvements: It's worth providing feedback to Microsoft about this issue. They may consider it for future updates, especially if it's a common concern among users.

If you need to delete versions frequently, it might be worth discussing with your IT department whether they can create a script or use PowerShell commands to automate version deletions based on specific criteria, though this would require someone with the appropriate IT skills.

Try these steps and hopefully, it resolves your issue. In case you need further help or assistance, please let us know. You can also contact Microsoft Support if the problem persists.

Best regards

Deeksha