Frequent SharePoint Admin Issues

Common admin issues when managing a Microsoft 365 organization using SharePoint

This list is a work in progress. If you have dealt with any admin issues in SharePoint, please feel free to add your item in a Change request.

Resource Limit is reached

Microsoft tracks what they call "Resource Units" which is a daily limit on API usage. When these units are exceeded, it may trigger a Resource Limit is Reached error.

The table below from Microsoft shows the Resource Unit cost with the Microsoft Graph API:

Resource units per request	Operations
1	Single item query, such as get item Delta with a token Download file from drive item
2	Multi item query, such as list children, except delta with a token Create, update, delete, and upload
5	All permission resource operations, including $expand=permissions

While uncommon in standard operations, custom code, custom web parts, complex list views and queries, and custom apps can consume Resource Units quickly and cause throttling.

Syncing data across multiple machines and data migrations can also result in quick usage of Resource Units, so should be considered when planning these operations.

Resource limits are based on the number of licensed users and on a per-app basis in a tenant.

See Avoid getting throttled or blocked in SharePoint Online for a full breakdown.

The nunber of items exceeds the List View Threshold

SharePoint Online has generous limits for the amount of files and folders that can be stored in Sites and Document libraries, with 30 million items technically allowed.

However, there is a soft limit of 5000 items per list view, which can easily be met in an "All Documents" and other similarly large views. This limit means that although items will still be stored, only 5000 can be viewed in a view, which can generate an error instead of displaying the items in the given view.

Best practices are to limit views to well under this 5000 soft limit, but when this is not possible, tactics in Living Large with Large Lists and Large Libraries is a community-sourced Microsoft resource that can help.

Unable to break or reinherit permissions

When a folder, list, or library in SharePoint contains over 100,000 items, permissions inheritance can't be broken or reinherited for the grouped items. However, this does not apply to individual items within that group, which can still be changed at will.

If required, best practices recommend restructuring groups to be below the 100,000-item threshold.