Managing large document library

Question

Hello,

I have designed and created a document library with metadata. It has folders for each of the property/building we manage (2,000+ folders). The folders are used to share content with each building user securely. The library has approximately 8,000 documents and its growing everyday (at the rate of 200+ documents everyday). I have indexed all the key columns (12 columns) and changed the view to modern view. However, I am not able to see certain views as it is giving an error message saying the list view threshold limit of 5,000 items has been reached. The standard view looks at documents by Site Name.

Documents by Site Name - Default View

• Site Name (Lookup metadata - Grouped and indexed)
• Document Area (Lookup metadata - Indexed column)
• Document Type (Lookup metadata- Indexed column)
• Document Sub-Type (Lookup metadata - Indexed column)

Can someone please help or advice?

Best regards,

Tanveer

Answer 1

Hi Tanveer,

Thanks for your reply, I am happy to hear that the error message disappeared.

I am very sorry about the inconvenience.

For better help you, I will answer your questions one by one:

1. When we use Modern view, there are not 5000 items limitation, you can add more than 5000 items.

There is not the detailed limitation about it, however, we can only store 30 million items or files in a SharePoint list or library.

About the question 2 and 3, I have tested this on our side, we can't reproduce it, the issue may be related to the special lists.

I do understand the inconvenience it has made and apologize for it. To narrow down the issue and resolved the list, the best way to troubleshoot the issue is to report the issue to the related Team.

So we suggest you contact the administrators in your organizations and open a support ticket in the Office 365 admin center via the steps in the article for further help. The support team there has the correct escalation channel for this case. This is also the most efficient way in handling this kind of issue.  

Thanks for your understanding.

Qing

Answer 2

Hi Quin,

Thanks for your response.

I have changed the library to modern view and removed the groups, which has removed the error. The view has 24 columns (including a few lookup and list columns), no grouping, filtering, sorting or counting is enabled.

However, I now find that the filters don't show all the building names in the Site Name column (metadata - lookup based column).

Unfortunately, I can't share the screenshot of our library due to confidentiality. 

I have a few questions fo you: 

1. Is the modern view suppose to show more than 5,000 documents per view? If yes, how many?
2. Why does filtering not show all values present in the metadata?
3. Why can't I apply filters to the existing/default view?

Best regards,

Tanveer

Answer 3

Hi Tanveer,

Did you need further help? Do you have any updates?

Regards,

Qing

Answer 4

We can store up to 30 million items or files in a SharePoint list or library, however, there is a limitation of list view, it can’t show more than 5000 items, you may run into a list view threshold error.

So you're supposed to manage how many items display in a view? Ridiculous - a more honest answer would be to keep libraries below the 5k limit and create a lot of libraries. 5k is a hard limit - once you exceed it you can no longer query the database and most operations are blocked.

Answer 5

Hi Tanveer,

Thanks for posting the question on our forum.

We can store up to 30 million items or files in a SharePoint list or library, however, there is a limitation of list view, it can’t show more than 5000 items, you may run into a list view threshold error.

You can refer to the following article to edit the list view:

Manage large lists and libraries in SharePoint

If this is not your situation, you are welcome to post back and provide the following information, I will keep working on this:

1. The screenshot of error message.
2. Check if all libraries meet the issue.
3. Which views meet the issue? Can you provide the steps about creating the view?

Regards,

Qing