Any potential concern of large SharePoint document libraries (>5,000)?

[C Lee]

Hi SPO community,

Our organization is currently in the process of migrating on-premises file shares to SharePoint Online (SPO). To accommodate users who are unwilling to relinquish their folder structure, the migration team has opted to move the nested folder structure, along with all the files, into a single document library. Consequently, this has resulted in significantly larger document libraries (>5,000 items). The largest one currently holds 131,000 files with multiple layers of folders. Fortunately, with nested folder structure the 5,000 item view restriction is not a concern for our users.

However, my main apprehension revolves around potential post-migration maintenance issues. One particular concern is that with over 20,000 items, auto-indexing may not occur, which could potentially impact the Search function adversely. I am curious if there are any other potential concerns associated with creating such large document libraries.

If you possess any insights or information to share on this matter, I would be extremely grateful. Thank you in advance!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@C Lee 

It's not recommended at all and the experience won't be good,both from end user perspective but also Goverance and lifecycle.

I truly recommend you to split it up and create a new structure and teach the user how to filter and to use search

These issues are encountered:

• Filtering not really working as it should
• File syncronization will cause issues
• Querying the library will be a PIA
• Indexation issues
• Can't break permission and handle permission will be a pain

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/community/large-lists-large-libraries-in-sharepoint

[#3]

Agree with most points. Definitely try to break into multiple libraries due to sharing permissions, unless you turn Sharing off. We haven't hit the issue yet, but trying to redo any custom permissions once the chain gets broke and you have over 10k? Might be 100k can't remember, you can't set permissions at that point at that high up the hierarchy.

The one biggest thing you want to do first off is disable sync. Sync is the devil and the old tech used for OneDrive which would sync entire libraries and when stopping sync and syncing other folders will duplicate files locally on users machines and they will start editing the non synced files locally from "recent files" in office apps etc. It's a nightmare. So turn Sync off if you take any advice from this thread lol.

This doesn't mean they can't sync thou. They can still utilize the "Link to OneDrive" feature which is way better tech. When you remove the link/shortcut etc. it will purge all the synced files from the client that are in the cloud and cleanup etc. you can easily selectively sync folders AND it syncs to the cloud onedrive creating shortcuts to those locations so if you have mulitple machines or replace machines the synced locations to SharePoint shortcuts/links will migrate simply by setting up OneDrive.

[#4]

Thank you for your recommendations.

[#5]

Thank you for your recommendations. Good advice to turn off sync. Will take this back to the migration team to disable it. Thanks again!

[#6]

Forward this article. Everything online is cumbersome. This method in this article to "Turn off OneDrive sync for Libraries" is a single tenant command. It won't break existing sync's but it will remove the button to sync going forward etc.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharepoint-sync#turn-off-onedrive-sync-for-sharepoint-l...

They can still use the modern "Add shortcut" method to sync files, but this disables the old method. 

[#7]

Thank you once again for sharing the reference.