If you are still working on the document, it may be safer to remove the oldest versions only. Select the document, click the … to the right of the name, and select “Version History” from the menu. There may be several versions that take up space. This can make sense for very large documents that you have worked on intensively and that you want to keep.
When projects have been completed or interest has waned, you might as well move them to a SharePoint archive site, a records center (in that case they should have been moved there long ago!) or delete them. Generally you will have accumulated quite a lot of documents in your career. Then sort for the oldest documents by clicking the pull-down arrow next to the Modified column and selecting “Older to newer”. They may fit on your SharePoint or Teams site as well, so you can Move them there, or perhaps they can be deleted. Determine whether the largest files need to stay on your OneDrive. Open a folder and click on the pull-down arrow next to the File size column and click on “Larger to smaller”. The “Attachments” folder to store email attachments is one, but Apps (contains Forms documents), Microsoft Teams Data, Microsoft Teams Chat files and Pictures can also contain a lot of documents that you may not be aware of. * Please be aware that Microsoft365 adds folders to your OneDrive when you use certain applications. The following paragraph has been added in May 2020: Although OneDrive is a SharePoint site, it misses some cool SharePoint functionality, such as the option to add metadata columns and create views, or the possibility to add templates. Unfortunately you will have to do this by folder, as you can not create views without folders. Find the largest and the oldest documents In case you have no location at your disposal, create or request a SharePoint site or a Team (which comes with a SharePoint site) so you can share documents with your project team or department. Create or Request a SharePoint or Teams site If you have many documents to move, you may either want to do it in smaller batches or use Copy To and delete the documents after you have checked that they have all safely arrived at their SharePoint destination.Īnd if you no longer need the documents you share, you can just delete them. (If you want to know how Copy To and Move To work, read my earlier post and also my post about the risks) Moving documents to a SharePoint site The documents will be deleted from your OneDrive in the process. (Make sure you follow that site so it appears as one of your first choices). If you want to move the documents to SharePoint, go back to your “My One Drive” section, select them and then click “Move To” from the grey bar and select the SharePoint site where they will live. Do you still need them at all? Do you still need to share them or are they ready to live elsewhere? The overview of the documents I share with others – “Departmental docs” sounds like an excellent candidate to be reviewed and moved! So, check out which documents you share and with whom. ?ĭo you plan on leaving the organization soon? Check out this post to see what to do – and start now. (After a period when your manager can access it.) We frequently get questions about lost shared documents as many people appear not to be aware of this. Once it is final, please move it to a SharePoint site so it can be part of the team’s collective knowledge and make room in your OneDrive.ĭo not hoard shared OneDrive documents – if you leave the organization your OneDrive will disappear with all its content. Sharing documents in OneDrive to collaborate on is great as long as the document is not final. Move shared documents to SharePoint or Teams
Look at the top right of the page to see how much free space is left. On the next page you will see the lists in your OneDrive site collection (it is a SharePoint site collection, after all) and the amount of free space is shown top right.
You will pass a useful screen with notification options – worth looking at but out of scope for this post. So, click on the Gear wheel top right, click “OneDrive settings” and then select “More settings”. It helps to know how much stuff you have, and how much you need to remove. Also, emptying the recycle bin will free up space! Click “Recycle bin” on the left-hand side and then “Empty recycle bin” 2. If, during cleaning, you accidentally delete too much, you will have fewer documents to search through for restoring. You may want to start with a clean slate, so let’s empty the Recycle Bin first. It may be interesting for you as well! 1.
So, we are currently helping them with cleaning up and giving them some tips on how to keep within boundaries. As mentioned in earlier posts, the majority of my colleagues have 2 GB of storage space in their OneDrive and some struggle to stay within those limits.