Archiving strategy for list with over 5000 items

Question

On SharePoint Online, I've got this list which just recently went over 5000 items. We have indexed columns and filtered list views in place in preparation for this, but it's still not enough and is breaking custom script components on our site.

We figured that for the time being, we would place older items on an archive list with a similar structure to the original list.

Is this a sound plan? How would we go about doing this?

I've tried saving the list as a list template but it won't let me since I have the threshold limit exceeded. Is there any way around this besides manually creating this custom list? How would the items be moved as well without them losing their IDs?

Answer 1

Your best option here is to open the list with MS Access (List ribbon -> Open with Access). From access you can either save the data locally or export it to another list (Right click the list -> Export -> SharePoint List), and also delete the old items (after you save or export them) from the list.

When you export the list from access, the new list will contain the column _OldID which will contain the IDs from the original list.

Answer 2

Found a workaround with regards to saving the list as a template:

I was able to save the original list as a list template by deleting a few list items first from the list. Once I had the list template saved, I simply restored the deleted list items.

With regards to moving items over. I might have to rely on a third party tool such as Sharegate if I want to keep the IDs intact I guess