Sharepoint Online Document Library 5000 view threshold

Question

i just need some clarification regarding the Document Library size as well as the 5000 view limit threshold. I am on Sharepoint Online by the way

1. Every Document Library created, site or sub-site, can hold up to 30 million items

2. There's is a view limit threshold of 5000 items. Can avoid that by creating a filtered view which gives me less data eg group by year?

3. If i filter view by year, is the only way to find a record via the Search this site search bar instead of the Find a file search bar if i don't know what year the record is categorized in?

To be honest i am quite shocked and annoyed by this limitation. I understand the back-end processing power needed however its just not great

How do you guys deals with a Document Library with more than 5000 items? 30 million items in the library with a 5000 view limit

Answer 1

In theory, creating filtered views will work. However, for myself, this did not work as expect and cannot remove the threshold warning.

For avoiding the list view threshold, you can go to library settings > Indexed columns(under Columns section) to create new indexes for your columns. Check below article about how to Add an index to a SharePoint column:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-an-index-to-a-sharepoint-column-f3f00554-b7dc-44d1-a2ed-d477eac463b0

Note: You need to created indices for each column.

Answer 2

As per me i organize the Document Library in a Folder Structure like Year and months. regarding the search issue if you index specific column of the document Library still you will be able to perform the search in Search bar. we can't Increase this 5000 threshold limit in Sharepoint online at least in Server we have option to do.Actually this limit has been put on SQL database where actually List and Library data is stored.MS does not want SQL to be in deadlock situation serving large query for one user and consume all the resources.

Here is the MS link you already would have gone through https://support.office.com/en-us/article/manage-large-lists-and-libraries-in-sharepoint-b8588dae-9387-48c2-9248-c24122f07c59

Only thing we can make work around like use Folders, Index columns, Views but we cant change this limit put by MS.

Answer 3

The 5000 item limit is not that onerous if you leverage Search effectively. All of your list items can be indexed (meaning the full text of their properties is stored somewhere outside the SQL database), and there is no real need for you to ever see them all at once, anyway.

I would suggest planning ahead and designing your Lists/Libraries to be optimized for search, e.g. by using Site Columns and custom Content Types, indexing important columns, and using managed metadata for columns that express a hierarchy of information (e.g. product families, component trees, etc.). Then, you can create a custom page for Searching those Lists or add a search vertical to the main Search Center that makes it easier to find things without necessarily knowing what you're looking for.

Use Content Search Web Parts and create Custom Refiners so that you can drill down on results by keywords or tags. I wrote a detailed post about this here.

Custom Display Templates are also beneficial where you want to customize what information is exposed by your list items in the Search Results. (However, I am not totally sure this is possible in SharePoint Online; you need access to the _catalog/masterpage/Display Templates directory.) (Source)

Site Columns are valuable because they automatically get indexed and mapped to crawled properties in the Search Schema. (Source)

Custom Content Types are useful because you can use them to easily restrict your search results to a certain type or combination of types, making it simple to filter out all other kinds of documents and list items. (See Also)