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ChrizK's avatar
ChrizK
Brass Contributor
Nov 02, 2022

Sharepoint versioning - limit the number of Minor (draft) versions

Hi,

 

My current organisation implemented Teams some time ago.  Obviously, using a collaborative tool such as this starts to amass files.  We have chosen to implement Check-out and Versioning on a Library.  We don't necessarily want to keep many historic copies, but want to ensure edits are not saved unnecessarily, and want the ability to go back/restore if required.

We have now reached a point where warning emails are being received "Approaching SharePoint Site Storage Limit".  On investigation, I have found one user is happily saving minor versions of his document, currently the 20MB file is taking up 870MB, being 17% of our allocated storage.

He doesn't need all these historic copies, and so I want to limit the number of minor versions, my chosen limit being 5 minor versions.

 

I can only find options to limit the number of Major Versions, and the number of Major versions which have associated Minor versions.

MS articles state "The maximum number of minor versions between major versions is 511."

There is no mention of setting a lower limit that I can find.

 

Is it correct that there is no way to limit the Minor versions?

 

It seems crazy that a user can create a minimum of 100 major versions + 511 minor versions, especially as we are having to work to an enforced storage limit.  Why shouldn't anyone be able to  limit the minor versions?

 

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

This https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-versioning-works-in-lists-and-libraries-0f6cd105-974f-44a4-aadb-43ac5bdfd247 discusses 'tracking', "Others only track the major versions".

What does this mean?  Is tracking actually storing/saving, ie only the ability to store major versions?

 

The change in terminology indicates that I could possible switch to Create Major Versions but somehow keep the ability to create Minor Versions, with only Major being tracked.  I suspect this is just a poor choice of wording in the article 😞

 

Out of interest, if I were to attempt to change my library settings from  Create major and minor (draft) versions to  Create major versions, what would happen?

I dare not try as it could potentially wipe out my colleagues (current) minor versions without warning!

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