OneDrive App Sync Limitation - File Count
Faculty, staff, and students use the OneDrive app to sync OneDrive and SharePoint to their computers. This app lets users open OneDrive and SharePoint files directly from File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (macOS).
The OneDrive sync app is known to slow down when syncing over 100,000 files. Beyond 300,000 files, syncing may become much slower or fail.
SharePoint and OneDrive are both a part of Microsoft 365. This allows them to use the same OneDrive application on your computer. Consequentially, the combined file count across OneDrive and SharePoint may affect your sync performance.
When does this affect me?
The first time a user links OneDrive to their computer, the app shows a status of “Processing [######] changes.” It creates placeholder files locally that act as shortcuts to cloud files, letting you open items to download and edit easily. This happens for every file in your OneDrive and connected SharePoint sites when you first connect your computer. If you have more than 100,000 files (this is a soft threshold, not a hard cutoff), you may begin to experience sync problems.
This file count is the scope of the total number of files the OneDrive app is keeping in sync with the cloud. This includes:
Files stored in your OneDrive in addition to ↓
Shortcuts to the following, including the files stored inside the shortcuts:
SharePoint sites
SharePoint Document Libraries
Individual folders in addition to ↓
All “Sync” folders/files
Whether you have a single SharePoint site exceeding the threshold, or it is the combination of your OneDrive files and your SharePoint files exceeding the threshold, you will experience these sync issues. What matters is how many files the OneDrive app is attempting to keep up-to-date with the cloud, not where the files are or what kind of files they are.
Additional information about syncing
The OneDrive app functions sequentially. If you rename a folder and then rename a file, your computer will send the folder name-change first. This remains true during the synchronization state: if you work on a file while your computer is performing a large synchronization task, your computer must finish the synchronization before sending your changes to the cloud. Therefore, once the app is keeping track of too many files, the app and the user experience become very sluggish and undesirable.
How to work with this limitation
Reduce your synced file count and/or follow this guide: https://uconn.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/IKB/pages/26426540150
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