Forum Discussion
Upcoming (2022 Nov/Dec) enforcement of limits for SharePoint lists & libraries in Site Collection
On Jul 26, 2022, MC405984 was published that states Microsoft will start enforcing (Nov/Dec 2022) hard limits on the number of list and libraries a site collection can have instead of just a recommendation as it is now. I have developed a SPFx solution (single page web part) for my company's legal department that provides a UI for managing contract metadata (across several lists), and creates a library for each revenue generating client as soon as they have documents to upload. We currently have over 20,000 clients, and nearly 20,000 libraries in the site collection (single site). We were forced to use this model instead of a single library because the requirements demand unique permissions which in a single library would exceed the existing rule of 5,000 maximum unique permission per library. The SPFx web part is extremely fast, and creates libraries quickly with no throttling. The user's experience within the site are limited to the SPFx web part app which has been thoughtfully created to avoid throttling-prone queries. The one place that is slow is the Site Contents page, but users are never using it because their entire experience is within the UI of my app. So my question: does this change have to happen? My app was developed in 2020 and at the time this was not a rule, but a suggestion that was part of the Listview Threshold guidance. I went out of my way to craft an app that would work given the limits in the SharePoint online platform because it's great for document storage, identity management and security. This rule enforcement will cripple my application. Since the reason for the rule is to improve user experience (which I have to imagine is affecting Site Contents mostly), I wonder if it would make more sense to find a way to work with the few sites that contain a large number of lists/libraries rather than hamstringing the platform. Perhaps there could be an administrative setting to allow a site to opt-in to have more than 2000 lists/libraries with the default that it is not allowed. That would give me and other developers/admins a viable path forward, and would also enforce the 2000 limit for all other sites by default.
Roger GuMicrosoft
DennyR, thanks for your feedback.
Unfortunately, we are not able to provide the capability to opt out sites from the limits. The sites that exceed the limits can impact more than just these sites. In the worst case, it can impact all the sites that are hosted in the same infrastructure.
Besides, not experiencing issues yet does not guarantee won't in the future. The service is a complex system that keeps evolving. There are certain operations that will fail and can cause cascading failure in the service. As mentioned early, the impact goes beyond the sites exceeding the limits.
- RogerSomeone, thank you for the reply. Great to hear from someone on the team. This is in alignment with guidance I've received a couple of days ago from the PG as well through escalated tickets for our tenant. It's definitely frustrating on our side because SPO is terrific in so many ways. It gives us SO much granular control + all the greatness of doc mgmt + security + API access for terrific custom apps. I wish this one thing wasn't a hindrance. Sigh. So we're undertaking some architectural changes to the custom app that will bring our app into compliance. But I'm truly not sure if we're going to be able to make the November/December rollout. Can I petition ya'll to consider moving that back at least a couple of months? The July announcement with a November rollout allowed us only 4 months to figure something out. Seems like an additional 2 months or so would be a reasonable request. What do you think?
Roger Gu I have just read the new announcement about this limitation for February 2023:
https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/home#/MessageCenter/:/messages/MC405984
I still have a doubt about the real limit.
In the documentation it is affirmed: "2,000 lists and libraries combined per site collection (including main site and any subsites).".
Which I understand, you cannot have 2000 libraries/lists counting all in the main site and all in the subsites (perhaps 2000 subsites).
But then in the message center, they say: "For instance, a site collection can have 2,000 subsites (including the main site) and each subsite (including the main site) could have 2,000 lists and libraries (including the hidden and default out of the box libraries)."
With this message, I understand, that there is a limit of 2000 lists/libraries in the main site, another "new" limit of 2000 lists in every subsite, so at the end you could have, let's imagine, 10 subsites, and you could have 2000 of the main site + 2000 lists x 10 == 12000.
Is this correct?
Thx in advance.
- Roger Gu
Miguel Angel Gonzalez Your understanding is correct. The public guidance is always the same - 2k doc libs/lists with a site collection, including the ones in subsites within the site collection. The difference is that the upcoming enforcement will only be 2k doc libs/lists per site(spweb), hence the number in your example is correct.
Hey Roger Gu - Here's some more feedback about the upcoming limit.
Roger Gu Hi, is MC405984 applicable to SharePoint sites that are leveraging the PWA template? Each project within a PWA sites creates a sub-site. Each sub-site gets default lists / libraries. As you can imagine , the list/library limit will be breached fairly quickly. I'm seeing this in my environment on two site collections, and there's not enough time to remediate.
Edited to tag the correct Roger
Hi ShadanQureshi - You should reach out to your Microsoft support team to confirm whether your sites are impacted.
Roger Gu these questions were meant for you. Have now changed my name because it was too similar to yours
