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I have a list that's butting up against the 5000 item threshold and I've added a couple of dummy items so I can experiment with the threshold before I cross over with real data. My list is structured so that each item is unique (enforced) but can be assigned to multiple projects. Then I create a view filter for each project number which displays (and lets me manipulate) only the items assigned to that project.

The 256 character limit on "single line of text" columns has forced me to create several "project" columns over the years and many of my items have entries in each column. Each project view uses a filter on all project columns, so "Project1 contains [project number], or Project2 contains [project number], or Project3 contains [project number], etc". Each view returns about 50-100 items, so it should work fine with Sharepoint's large site rules.

This scheme works perfectly under 5000 items, but as soon as I cross over it errors out. I've indexed all project columns but it still doesn't work. I think it may have to do with using multiple "or" conditions on the view, but I haven't found any official guidance or workarounds yet.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to handle this? It seems like I either need a new way to filter the list or some way of combining all of the project columns into one. I'd love to consolidate all project numbers into a multi-line column, but apparently those can't be used for filtering.

I still have the nuclear option of opening up the threshold to some number that I'll probably never hit, but I would prefer to do it correctly. I'm the only user of this list, so I really don't care about the resource hit as long as the list still functions.

Thanks.

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We usually use AND conditions to limit the items returned in a list view since

using an OR filter almost always increases the number of items returned and won't be effective under these circumstances

(Quoting Use filtering to modify a SharePoint view -Section Setting up filters)

As is recommended in Manage large lists and libraries in SharePoint, your configuration should work with items exceeding 5000 threshold as long as none of the list views has exceeded the 5K threshold (including the default All items list view).

You can modify your filter conditions and see if it helps.

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  • Thank you for the reply! In my case, each item only has one instance of the project number somewhere in one of the columns. If I try to filter by project number in Project1 "and" Project2, I get zero results, since the number will never be in both columns. If I filter for project number on each column individually, the item results will always be low (23-30?), but combining them with "or" seems to be causing problems.
    – Brian Lyerly
    May 18, 2020 at 17:39
  • @BrianLyerly Ok I see. If you cannot modify the filter conditions, I think you can just go ahead and raise the limit of the List View Threshold, which is also a supported solution to deal with the list view threshold: support.office.com/en-us/article/…
    – Chelsea_MSFT
    May 19, 2020 at 6:30

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