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dandraka's avatar
dandraka
Copper Contributor
Apr 09, 2025
Solved

Sharepoint Online: fastest way to retrieve folder count in a document library

Hi all

 

I'm really looking for what the title says. Right now I'm doing Get-PnPFolderItem -ItemType Folder (using Pnp.Powershell but can try other options) but with more than a few 10s of folders, this is REALLY slow.

 

The thing is, I just need a count (recursively), not all info as I'm getting with Get-PnPFolderItem.

 

Any ideas?

apis
PnP
  • dandraka's avatar
    dandraka
    Apr 09, 2025

    After trying many different things and getting a lot of "The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold" errors, I got... creative 🙂

     

    I did the following:

     

    # get file count from storage metrics
$storageMetrics = Get-PnPFolderStorageMetric -FolderSiteRelativeUrl 'Shared Documents' -Connection $conn
$fileCount = $storageMetrics | Select-Object -ExpandProperty TotalFileCount

# now get total number of items in list
$totalItemQuery = "/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('Documents')/ItemCount"
$result = Invoke-PnPSPRestMethod -Url $totalItemQuery -Connection $conn

# and subtract the files
$folderCount = $result.value - $fileCount

Write-Host "Total files $fileCount and folders $folderCount"

     

    From my tests so far, this looks correct and REALLY fast. Can anyone think of a reason this might not be correct?

  • dandraka's avatar
    dandraka
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 09, 2025

    After trying many different things and getting a lot of "The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold" errors, I got... creative 🙂

     

    I did the following:

     

    # get file count from storage metrics
$storageMetrics = Get-PnPFolderStorageMetric -FolderSiteRelativeUrl 'Shared Documents' -Connection $conn
$fileCount = $storageMetrics | Select-Object -ExpandProperty TotalFileCount

# now get total number of items in list
$totalItemQuery = "/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('Documents')/ItemCount"
$result = Invoke-PnPSPRestMethod -Url $totalItemQuery -Connection $conn

# and subtract the files
$folderCount = $result.value - $fileCount

Write-Host "Total files $fileCount and folders $folderCount"

     

    From my tests so far, this looks correct and REALLY fast. Can anyone think of a reason this might not be correct?

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