Dealing with large SP document library

Question

Hello everyone,

On my local PC, I have around 180K combinations of files/folders (around 20 folders and the rest are files). I want to move those files to my intranet SP site under one document library and I want to continuously upload files/folders and assign permissions to users and perform other operations.

1. Will anything stop me from performing any operations? Like assigning permissions, since I know it is not recommended to store more than 30K files in a single library. Currently, I didn't plan to structure the library and spread the content to different libraries.
2. What are the best practices to organize documents and plan for a good structure?
3. It will be easy to copy/move files or folders from the library that contains 180K files/folders to different libraries when I plan for a structure?

Can please someone provide a detailed answer according to the above concerns?

Any help is highly appreciated.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi @Julien Anid ,

As mentioned in the official article:
SharePoint limits

For your questions:

Q1: A list can have up to 30 million items and a library can have up to 30 million files and folders. When a list, library, or folder contains more than 100,000 items, you can't break permissions inheritance on the list, library, or folder. You also can't re-inherit permissions on it. However, you can still break inheritance on the individual items within that list, library, or folder, up to the maximum number of unique permissions in the list or library (see the next section).

250 GB - File upload limit. Applies to each individual file uploaded to Microsoft Teams Files tab, SharePoint document libraries, OneDrive folders, and Yammer conversations.

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Q2: To better manage documents, you could:

1. Analyze existing documents. Determine document types, properties;
2. Create a flexible and easily extendable content type structure;
3. Choose where and how to store documents in SharePoint;
4. Create fields, sites, libraries and lists. Add content types;
5. Plan for permissions;
6. Define and automate SharePoint document naming;
7. Unify document templates location;
8. Distribute content to smaller files;
9. SharePoint document automation;
10. Optimize views and libraries;

Here is a blog you could have a look:
Best Ways to Store Documents in SharePoint

Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link.

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Q3: Yes you can use move to/copy to feature, here are some limits:

Please refer to this article for more information:
Move or copy files in SharePoint

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Answer 2

Hello @Elsie Lu_MSFT ,

Thank you so much for providing your answers in details.

For Q1, I can understand that if the library already contains more than 100K files/folders I will be able to assign permissions for individual files but I can't re-inherit permissions from the parent.

Have a nice week ahead!

Best regards,
Julien