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I have a document imaging solution that will have a document library for each weekday for scanned in documents.

I know that it is recommended not to exceed 2000 items in a document library.

Is there a recommended number of document libraries to have per site?

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2 Answers

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Is there a recommended number of document libraries to have per site (not a collection)?

Yes, this number is also 2000. But you will have to plan for navigation if you try to reach that number of lists/doclibs in one website. In addition you should care about the size of your content DB for backup and restore reasons.

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Thanks, this will help a lot. I will need to plan out the navigation as you said. – sange Jan 24 '11 at 15:50
Here are the SharePoint 2007 recommendations: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… (see @SPDoctor's answer for the 2010 version). I would also add that you can have one document library with many nested folders. Ex: upload the scanned documents into a new dated folder in your library. – Kit Menke♦ Jan 24 '11 at 15:59
Thanks for the link - but note the edit to my answer below. – SPDoctor♦ Jan 24 '11 at 17:49
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The figure of 2000 items (now 5000 for SharePoint 2010) is a recommended maximum for a single view, i.e. showing them in the browser, and is called the list view threshold. It is a well-known myth that in earlier versions of SharePoint there was a 2000 item limit for lists - in fact this was never the case.

The current recommendation for SharePoint 2010 is a maximum of items per list or document library of 30,000,000 (yes, 30 million). There is no specific limit on the number of document libraries per site that I am aware of, but bear in mind that there is a recommended maximum storage size of 100 Gb per site collection. In practice I think a large number of document libraries in a single site would become impractical to manage in the administrative interface before you reached any performance-related limit.

Technet guidance (SharePoint 2010): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

[Edit] The Technet guidance for SharePoint 2007 is unfortunately widely misinterpreted. Although it does now state that the "2000" figure refers to built-in UI performance, you have to read it very carefully. Many people over the last few years have referred to this document and been left with the impression that SharePoint has a limit of 2000 items in lists, document libraries etc. Probably the best explanation is at http://www.binarywave.com/blogs/eshupps/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=188.

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The link above is about SP2010. I have found an article about MOSS 2007: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787(office.12).aspx – AlexPoint Jan 24 '11 at 16:03
Yes, but even in SP2007 guidance the 2000 items/list and 2000 lists/site refer to the list view performance. – SPDoctor♦ Jan 24 '11 at 16:17
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+1 Definitely worth noting that the 2000 item "limit" is for views specifically. We routinely have way more than 2000 documents in a library by using nested folders (what I was trying to say above). :) – Kit Menke♦ Jan 24 '11 at 18:11

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