How to Manage SharePoint Storage When it is Full?

  

Published By Karen Chard 

Approved By Rollins Duke

Published On July 4th, 2025

Reading Time 6 Min Read

Do you know how much SharePoint stores the data? and how to manage your data? In this article, we will discuss both SharePoint storage limits and manage SharePoint storage. So, read the article to the end.

SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the core tools provided by Microsoft 365. This application is used to store, organize, share and access data. It is a web based program with cloud services which you can use to collaborate and manage your files. By using SharePoint, teams can easily do real-time collaboration, track changes, versions and many more.

SharePoint can also be used as a backend content management system. Where you can manage and organize content such as documents, data, and other digital assets in your organizations. However, when the organization grows, the problem of storage also arises. Therefore, it is important to know the maximum storage limit of SharePoint and also ways to manage their SharePoint storage.

What is the SharePoint Storage Limit?

First, let’s understand the storage capacity of SharePoint, per site collection and quota and default limits per items.

• The default limit of SharePoint storage is different based on your subscriptions. If you have bought business plans. You will get 1TB base storage per business and additionally 10 GB extra storage to each licensed user.
• This storage is shared in all SharePoint sites. including Teams-linked sites. But, admin can assign custom quotas to specific sites.
• The per site collection can contain up to 25 TB.
• Also, maximum file size of items is 250 GB per file
• The default size of List/Library size is up to 30 million items, and maximum limit of view thresholds will not be up to 5000 items.

So, Microsoft has given you plenty of SharePoint storage limits. But, still it is not enough for some of the companies. Having oversize SharePoint storage can cause you many problems which we have mentioned below.

Issues When SharePoint Storage is Full

There are multiple problems you will face when SharePoint storage reaches its limit. Below are the most common issues.

• The most common issue will be you will not be able to store your new documents, images or videos. Even you can’t save small edits of existing data, if they created a new version.
• MS Teams is fully rely on SharePoint to store their files. If the limits are exceeded, then you are no longer able to save and share your data.
• If the storage space is full, then you are not able to do some functions like adding new list items, creating new subsites, or running automated flows.
• When you try to upload your documents to create new content. You will get error messages like storage limit reached or cannot save file.
• If you want to increase your SharePoint storage space then you have to purchase the additional storage which can be costly for some organizations.
• It also risks losing your important data and full storage also prevents you from backing up or retaining data.

All these problems you would face if your SharePoint storage limit is full. To avoid that it is better to manage them. In the upcoming section of the article we are going to see how you can do it.

How to Manage SharePoint Storage?

There are several ways that you can use to organize your SharePoint storage. By using them you will avoid any problems mentioned above.

1. The first step is to track your storage of each site. With the help of SharePoint Admin Center of Office 365. you can regularly monitor your storage space.
2. You can assign storage limits to individual site collections. By doing this you can prevent one site from consuming too much storage.
3. Whenever you edit your documents or files. A version history is saved in your SharePoint storage. If you don’t delete unnecessary old versions, your storage will be full.
4. It is better to empty your Recycle Bin from both the users and site-level.
5. Find out that you no longer needed, unused and duplicate data from the storage space. Then, remove and delete it.
6. If there is one-time sharing then avoid uploading unnecessary files. Use the links of expiration dates and encourage your colleague to delete the shared files when they don’t need it.

These are the manual ways that you can use to manage SharePoint storage. In addition to that, experts also recommend backing up your data as well. Here’s why.

In Conclusion

Some users don’t know about SharePoint storage limits and how to manage SharePoint storage. So, in this article we explain the default storage limit and ways to manage them. If your storage is full, you may encounter several problems. Therefore, we have provided techniques to manage your SharePoint storage with expert tips. By following them you will avoid any issues with them.