What Size of the File Can You Upload in a Sharepoint 2013 Site

April 14, 2022 Post a Comment

Ultimate guide to SharePoint size and usage limitations

SharePoint size and usage limitations
If there'southward one thing all SharePointers have to continue in mind, it's the limits of the tool you lot're using. Some of these tin can be abrasive, though nearly of them won't bother yous… for the nigh part.

That is until y'all find their being, seemingly correct when you're trying to finish a project, go information technology shared, or need to submit work. Knowing these limitations ahead of time can really proceed yous out of a jam in the future. And if y'all get striking with one of these limits when information technology matters, you lot'll remember it forever. Instead, why non simply recall the golden rule: check before yous practice it. SharePoint isn't space.

Allow me to repeat that:

SharePoint isn't infinite

Different systems have different limits, just defaults are by and large similar or the same. Your Information technology section may change some of these values, so you always want to be sure you lot know what'due south been put in place in your environment, lest you observe out—again, too late in the game—that the limits I mention here aren't actually what have been put in place for you.

(Most of the limits can be restricted further by your It grouping—i.due east., non expanded—so if they brand changes, information technology's usually not in your favor.)

Microsoft provides a ridiculously in-depth list of their limits, but information technology'southward a very overwhelming resource and well-nigh the entire commodity is irrelevant to the everyday user. So I went through and reddish-picked the ones that actually could have an impact on y'all day-to-mean solar day.

Or at least on that day when you might hitting the limit, but, in fact, donon, because you remembered a expert nugget y'all saw in this mail. Considering you're a practiced, conscientious SharePointer, of course!

One terminal, friendly reminder:

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Types of limits

Microsoft defines three types of limits within SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online:

Microsoft defines three types of limits within SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online

I disagree (respectfully, I guess) that three definitions are required, because thresholds and supported limits are roughly the aforementioned thing. Hither's how I interpret these definitions:

Boundaries: These are difficult limits that cannot be inverse by you, your site possessor, or your IT arrangement. Simply how difficult of a limit depends on which type of SharePoint system your It department has implemented:
- On-bounds SharePoint 2013: If your company uses SharePoint 2013 on their own servers, patches and updates to SharePoint may support improvements in these limits, only a full version upgrade of your system (due east.g., SP2010 to SP2013) is usually required to gain almost of the major limit improvements.
- SharePoint Online: If you're using SharePoint Online in Office 365, improvements on these limits can come up about whenever Microsoft decides to have action on them. Kind of like if you have a Gmail account, your quota is sometimes increased because Google wants to stay competitive in the amount of space they provide their users. So smile, you lot could come to work some Monday morning with a lot more than space.
Thresholds and supported limits: Both are suggested limits that tin can exist changed or surpassed, merely values put in place are recommended based on Microsoft testing. You want to break the limit? Take your chances on functioning. The limits are based on the ability for SharePoint to perform a given action (e.g., you can upload a 2-GB file—SharePoint's cool with it—simply it takes a long time and y'all could experience a browser timeout error during it, making the limit a applied one, and not fifty-fifty one that SharePoint can always control) or limit performance issues on the user side of things (e.g., having tens of millions of files in one document library will affect how chop-chop that library loads whenever you open it).

Sometimes I think the recommendation provided by Microsoft isn't so much about their testing as their ability to cover their own… well, you know what. Redmond prefers to be safe rather than lamentable. It likely protects them from legal action from customers. Not that anyone would ever sue Microsoft, of course.

SharePoint 2013 versus SharePoint Online

First, if yous're not clear on the deviation betwixt SharePoint and Office 365, kindly review my primer here. It volition help you lot to understand how these limits touch you.

If your employer uses SharePoint 2013 on its own server system, the limits you'll feel are likely going to exist static throughout much of its lifespan, until the system is upgraded to SharePoint 2016 or y'all migrate to SharePoint Online equally a part of an Role 365 migration/upgrade. SharePoint requires routine updates, usually every quarter, and your IT department likely installs them backside the scenes without your noesis. Unfortunately those stride increases ordinarily practise not support improvements like you get with a total-on version upgrade.

Nevertheless, SharePoint Online—because information technology'south run and operated by Microsoft and updates can be quickly rolled out—will sometimes benefit from performance and characteristic upgrades as Microsoft improves the product and rolls out smaller, more targeted releases than what we've been used to with the every-three-twelvemonth release of SharePoint on-bounds (SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016… encounter the design?).

That ways if you lot have Part 365 with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, you can really run into a do good when it comes to characteristic upgrades occurring in a timelier manner than having to await for your Information technology section to upgrade SharePoint, which, although every three years sounds adept, sometimes takes as long as ii release cycles to actually happen depending on your IT department. For case, your company may be on SharePoint 2007 so long that they skip SharePoint 2010 and become straight to SharePoint 2013, which tin can be a welcomed relief for power users, merely means y'all're stuck with 2007 features for far too long.

SharePoint Online is a better choice when it comes to getting feature upgrades, but it also ways you have to stay on height of the changes by following the Microsoft and SharePoint blogs so yous know about these improvements and, unfortunately, feature degradation or removal, which can seem to happen right nether your feet.

Site collections and sites

All SharePoint sites are part of a family of sites called a site collection. A site collection is ordinarily created by your It department. Child, grandchild, nifty-grandchild, etc. sites within that site collection (recall of them like branches on a single tree) are sometimes created by It and sometimes by whatever user that needs one. It depends entirely on the rules your IT section prepare.

Site Collections Graphic

It tin can create a multitude of site collections. Commonly they designate one to each arrangement in your visitor (eastward.g., section, geographic role, that kind of thing). Planning these out ahead of time is an example of a smart data architecture (IA), which, while not exactly something you may think about on a daily basis, actually impacts how you find what you lot're looking for and ultimately get your work washed. A good IA is one you don't find… because it merely makes sense.

Site collections and sites are different things and piece of work in different ways. As such, they accept dissimilar limits.

Microsoft recommends that site collections should not:

Comprise more than 250,000 sites (supported), which, for the record, is a listen-blowingly big number;
Contain more than:
1. 100 GB of information (relatively small considering the number of sites it can support) in SharePoint 2013; or
2. 25 TB of information in SharePoint Online (default starts at 1 GB then y'all have to asking an increase from your Information technology administrator; this changed from 1 TB in September 2016);
Have more ii million users (supported), which is, again, a huge number (and probably only of import to IT since they probable command who users are);
Have more 5,000 users in a SharePoint group (supported), which is actually somewhat contradictory to the last item; and
Utilize more than x,000 SharePoint groups.

These are non boundaries (i.east., difficult limits). If you make up one's mind to break these limits, performance and backup operations could be negatively affected, says Redmond.

No explicit limits are mentioned for individual sites except that SharePoint pages are limited to 25 spider web parts (threshold). This was surprising to me because I've built pages that probably come up close to that number. At that place are definitely cases where 25 web parts may exist warranted. And then keep this one in mind if you're a heavy user of many web parts on your SharePoint pages.

That said, each site in a site droveshares the size resourceof the unabridged site collection. That ways an exceedingly large site could be "stealing" infinite from other sites in that collection. I've seen this happen in exercise and it's not pretty. Particularly because many times the site owners of the "competing" sites don't even know the other exists until they observe out the other is hogging space. So, don't be that guy/gal.

At that place are only ii solutions to this problem: 1) delete content or 2) motion a site (either the offending site or a victim site). Both options suck. A lot. Nobody likes to review content and delete information technology. And the data move can be a nightmare if you don't take an expensive third-party tool to make the migration. Even if you do, they can still be complicated.

Document libraries

A document library is like a super folder in the eyes of SharePoint. Information technology supports version history, customized metadata (e.thousand., categories and the similar), a folder structure, and other tools. It'due south where you likely spend most of your time when y'all're creating, editing, and deleting files that live in SharePoint. A site owner can create a ton of libraries in any given site.

Microsoft recommends that:

Document libraries should not contain more than 30,000,000 documents (supported). That'south an insanely large amount. You tin go larger than this amount, but Microsoft doesn't recommend it.
By default the file size limit is set at:
1. SharePoint 2013: 250 MB (supported), though your Information technology department can increment that to a difficult maximum of ii GB (boundary). But that ii-GB value is an absolute maximum. Dissimilar the xxx,000,000 suggested limit above, the 2 GB file size can be very limiting at times, specially if we're talking multimedia and video.
2. Sharepoint 2016: two GB (supported), though your IT department can increase that to a difficult maximum of 10 GB (boundary). But that 10-GB value is an accented maximum.
3. SharePoint Online: ten GB (purlieus), only if you drag-and-driblet the file. Other upload methods (eastward.g., the "upload" button) are limited to 2 GB.

File and folder names have the following character limits:

File names are express to 128 characters in SP2013 (boundary) and 256 characters in SPO (boundary).
Folder names are limited to 256 characters.
Most importantly, the combination of folder path plusfile proper name is limited to 260 characters. These are all boundaries (i.e., hard limits).Exist conscientious of nested folders! This can really bite you in the rear!
(Notation: the source for this limit is based on a SP 2010 commodity, merely from research, it appears no changes occurred in the SP2013/SPO release.)

Okay, then why does this last particular matter? Because people beloved folders. For some reason, a seemingly endless tree of folders appears to actually bring warmth to the hearts of far too many people. And that can lead to a reallybad solar day for you lot if you do. Why?

Recollect about this example: a binder tree that has the post-obit structure…

Finance Section Annual Budget for 2016
- Supporting Documentation for 2016 Budget
  - Initial 2016 Upkeep Draft for Executive Commission Review
    - Budget 2016 Draft Documents Signed Off for Sharing Internally
      - Marys Initial Comments on Upkeep
        
        InitialDocumentReviewForSignOffFollowingCFOReview-Mary.docx

This won't open correctly in your browser once you browse to the deepest levels. Information technology totals 261 characters, which breaks the 260-character limit.

If you think that folder structure seems insane, good. Now look around at your colleagues. Most of them won't. Trust me. This happensall the time.

Next, version history supports up to 400,000 major versions (supported) and 511 minor versions (boundary). Both of these numbers are insanely high. Yous can read my full coverage of version history in this web log mail service.

When co-authoring on documents, Microsoft recommends no more than than 10 concurrent editors (threshold) be working at 1 time in whatever unmarried Give-and-take certificate or PowerPoint presentation. However, upward to 99 people tin be working at the same time (boundary). Microsoft mentions that performance could go an issue. But c'mon… clearly it's going to come downwards to logistics: imagine even a dozen people editing i certificate at the same time. If you don't run into edit conflicts all over, you've encountered a miracle.

Lastly, views in SharePoint are limited to 5,000 items. That includes files and folders. So, while you can have 30,000,000 documents in a library, y'all can simplydisplay upwardly to 5,000 of them (or folders they're living in) in any view. This is unequivocally SharePoint's Achilles heel, known in the business as the List View Threshold. And if you don't know about it, be sure to Google it. The Internet will be happy to let you in on this niggling turd. It may not seem like a big bargain; it very likely will be for you i 24-hour interval.

Social tools in SharePoint

Delve (Function 365) profile photos are best uploaded at 96×96 pixels. SP2013 suggests 300×300 pixels, but there is a known issue with the photos that are uploaded: they become blurry. Regardless, a foursquare crop is ever the best idea.

Newsfeed posts are limited to 512 characters. (Not quite Twitter, not quite Facebook.) Images are set up to 300 × 300 pixels, even if they get-go out larger. Each post tin can have a maximum of 100 replies.

Interestingly, if yous're using a blog site, there'due south a limit of 5,000 posts per weblog and 1,000 comments per blog postal service. The documentation says this is a supported limit, so it technically can become higher, but their use of "maximum number" in the description makes me think information technology's more of a purlieus. No word on whether this has an identical impact on your My Site blog. I assume it does, but there'due south no explicit statement on that. Learn more nigh blogging at work—and why it's a good affair both for yous and your employer—in my past blog post.

Additionally, you tin can follow up to 400,000 "things" in SharePoint, whether it'due south a colleague, a document, a site, a listing item, what have you. That's a lot of things. If you're worried about hitting that number, it may be time to rethink how you lot exercise work.

Office 365 Video Portal file size

Equally of February 2016, the maximum video size you can upload to the Office 365 video portal is x GB. The video portal is essentially a glorified library, so it plays past the same rules as document libraries, for the most part.

Notably, the ten-GB limit is a five-fold increase from the previous boundary (hard limit) of two GB. (Which, for the record, was a ridiculously small limit for video files, fifty-fifty though I realize SharePoint doesn't care whether the file is a infinite-hogging multimedia type or typically pocket-size document.)

Conclusion

SharePoint can be handy and practice a lot of things. Simply similar whatsoever production out there, information technology has its limits. And sometimes those limits are exceedingly annoying, especially when you're used to having fewer of those limits in products like Google Drive and DropBox.

That said, the limits won't carp you if you know what they are, or at to the lowest degree think to bank check hither offset before you go off and do something foolish similar create a 15-binder deep folder structure to house that one document yous justknow needs to go there. But hey, that'south none of my business.

References
icansharepoint. (2016). Ultimate guide to SharePoint size and usage limitations – icansharepoint. [online] Available at: http://icansharepoint.com/ultimate-guide-to-sharepoint-size-and-usage-limitations/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2017].

Reproduced under permission from Matt Wade