5,000 Item Limit Office 365 SharePoint - Document Set Solution

My last attempt at working within the 5,000 item limit with SharePoint online was utilizing folders. Yet, I had one other idea to try and that was the use of a Document Set.

What is a document set? It is a new feature introduced in SharePoint 2010. This allows for the creation of a set of multiple related documents. It is comprised of the Document set content type which is a folder based content type that organizes multiple related documents into a single view where they can be worked on and managed as a single entity. The purpose of this blog is not to go in depth into the workings of the Document Set but rather to see if it could be a solution to the 5,000 document issue that so many have encountered.

First, I have a document library consisting of one Document Set that has 5,000 items in it:



When I go to the Document Library and select the Document Set name, all of the files are listed (granted only a few are included in the screen shot below):


Before I increase the size of this 5K Documents Document Set above 5,000 items, I want to modify the default view. On the ribbon bar, select Library and then Modify View:


On the Item Limit, I am modifying the Number of Items to Display to be in batches of 50 (any number below 5,000 should be sufficient here):


Now, I will go and add another document to the library to increase the size to over 5,000 documents.


I go back to the Document Set and no error……














As long as the view is below 5,000 items in either total view or in batch then this solution works.

The other frequent question that I receive is what do I do with a library that has over 5,000 documents? The best way to resolve this is via a third party product and utilize that to copy over the data. My preference is Sharegate, and I can answer any questions related to Sharegate. **Please Note: I increased the item number to over 5010 and I received an error. Even with the view settings in batches of 50, so we are restricted to that limit even with Document Sets.

Here are some great articles dealing with different ways to manage large lists and libraries:


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