Forum Discussion

Kalos R's avatar
Kalos R
Copper Contributor
Apr 17, 2017

Default Versioning Settings - Number of Versions to retain

It appears that the default versioning settings for OneDrive are for 500 major versions.  Is there a way to reduce this default globally?  It doesn't appear so via the GUI but was wondering if perhap...
admin
limits
OneDrive for Business
Lou Mickley's avatar
Lou Mickley
Iron Contributor
Jul 20, 2017

If you are concerned about consuming space, keep in mind this is 500 versions, but not 500 copies of the file, only changed portions of the file.  Also, using Office Online saves the file frequently and drives up the version count, as does co-authoring.  Then additionally, OneDrive only syncs the currently copy to devices.

  • maximedelarue's avatar
    maximedelarue
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 15, 2025

    not at all. It keeps a full copy for each EDIT. Like 1 letter edit, new full copy.

  • Thomas Noble V's avatar
    Thomas Noble V
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 26, 2018

    I think that's only the case with MS Office documents, about which the infrastructure can ascertain what changes have been made.  I have a user who moved an Outlook PST file to their OneDrive folder (with good reasons at the time) and because that PST is the delivery location for an active mailbox that ended up with over 11,000 versions of the entire PST consuming all of their 1TB OneDrive storage.

    • KNIGHT LIU's avatar
      KNIGHT LIU
      Copper Contributor
      Apr 11, 2018

      Hi Thomas, we got one similar case. May I know how you delete these pst history versions to release space in onedrive? 

      • TimTheITGuy's avatar
        TimTheITGuy
        Copper Contributor
        Feb 19, 2022

        KNIGHT LIU, Best thing to do is prevent PST sync: 


        I'd like to add that when I tested today, our minimum versions to keep was 100 (Default 500)! We were hoping to set it to 2...

Resources