How to Free Up Space on SharePoint Fast

What Consume SharePoint Storage Quickly?

SharePoint and OneDrive are both Microsoft's cloud services, but they have the some differences. On the whole, SharePoint is a collaboration and content management platform that can be used for team collaboration, document sharing, workflow management, etc.; while OneDrive is a personal cloud storage service, mainly used for storing and synchronizing personal files.

If you or your team is using SharePoint, you might find the limited space is being eaten up quickly and it is very urgent to free up SharePoint space. So, what cause the SharePoint storage space being used up? You can find some clues from the following:

1. Large documents: Extensive reports or presentations can quickly fill up storage.

2. Frequent saves: Creating numerous versions of documents can lead to storage bloat.

3. Version history: Retaining all versions without proper management consumes space.

4. Deleted items: Files in the recycle bin occupy storage until permanently deleted.

5. Increasing site count: Multiple SharePoint sites can consume substantial storage.

6. Duplicate files: Storing multiple copies of the same file wastes space.

7. Unnecessary files: Unused or obsolete files contribute to storage consumption.

How to Free Up Space on SharePoint?- 5 Methods Available

When your SharePoint storage is reaching the capacity limit, some potential issues might appear. For instance, you cannot upload or create new files smoothly as usual. Besides, some existing files might become inaccessible. You’ll receive notifications alerting you to the storage issue. To prevent this, you can take the following steps to free up space.

Method 1. Delete Unused Files and Folders

Removing unnecessary content is a direct approach to freeing up valuable storage space. Regularly check out all your SharePoint files and identify those you don't need any longer, and then delete them to release the SharePoint storage space. Besides, it is also a great idea to combine multiple document libraries with similar content to reduce redundancy and optimize storage.

Method 2. Optimize File Sizes

Reducing file sizes can significantly impact your SharePoint storage capacity. In general, you can compress some large files to reduce its size. Recommend using some professional compression tools, which may lost damage the original quality. Besides, converting files to more efficient formats such as PDF or other optimized image formats can also help minimize storage usage.

Method 3. Manage Document Versions

Controlling document versions is essential for preserving document history while preventing excessive storage consumption. For instance, you can define clear guidelines about how long different versions of documents should be kept, or how to create new document versions to avoid unnecessary storage usage.

Method 4. Leverage SharePoint Recycle Bin

The SharePoint Recycle Bin provides a safety net for accidentally deleted items but can also contribute to storage consumption. To avoid deleted files in the Recycle Bin occupy the SharePoint storage all the time, you have to keep track of Recycle Bin's storage consumption to prevent it from filling up.  When necessary, delete items from it to reclaim precious storage space.

Method 5. Explore Additional Storage Options

For specific scenarios, consider alternative storage solutions to optimize SharePoint storage.

• OneDrive for Business: Offload personal files and documents to OneDrive for Business to free up SharePoint space.
• External cloud storage: Utilize third-party cloud storage providers for storing large or infrequently accessed files.

Once, you have located the additional storage options, no matter OneDrive for Business, Google Drive, or other mainstream cloud drive, you will meet another problem: how can you move files from SharePoint to the additional storage option? Don't worry! MultCloud can make it easily done. It is designed to help users transfer, sync or back up data across different clouds or different accounts under the same cloud provider. The whole process goes on online, in other words, no need to download files to local storage first.

Summary

In the vast ecosystem of Microsoft 365, SharePoint is the core of the entire platform. It not only hosts the content storage of all Microsoft 365 products such as OneDrive, Teams, and Power Platform, but is also the cornerstone of enterprise collaboration and content management. So, learning how to free up space and always leave enough space for new data are quite important for enterprises to efficiently utilize data and document resources to achieve higher productivity and business value.