SharePoint Online storage limits (Detailed Guide)

It is always challenging to manage SharePoint storage space in any organization. Here, I will try to explain about SharePoint Online storage limits. In this SharePoint tutorial. we will cover the below topics:

• SharePoint Online storage limits
• SharePoint Online storage capacity (25TB vs 1TB)
• How to Check SharePoint online storage limits
• Site collection storage metrics SharePoint Online
• Manage SharePoint Online Site Storage Limits
• Manage particular SharePoint Online site collection storage limit
• Allocate space while creating a new SharePoint site collection
• SharePoint online storage pricing
• How to add additional storage to your Office 365 subscription
• Get SharePoint online site storage PowerShell
• Change SharePoint Online Site Collection Storage Quota using PowerShell
• Set Storage Quota for all SharePoint Online Sites using PowerShell
• How to set SharePoint Online Site Storage Quota using PnP PowerShell

SharePoint online storage limits

What is the SharePoint Online storage limits? Basically, you want to know the SharePoint space in your organization.

The SharePoint space in your Office 365 tenant depends on the number of licenses you have.

According to Microsoft article, below are the SharePoint storage space you will get as an organization.

License Plan	Total storage per organization
Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, or Business Premium	1 TB + 10 GB per license purchased
Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, Office 365 E1, E3, or E5, or SharePoint Plan 1 or 2	1 TB + 10 GB per license purchased
Microsoft 365 F1 or F3, Office 365 F3	1 TB

By default Microsoft provides 1TB of space for a SharePoint Online subscription.

But the limit for a SharePoint Online site collection is 25TB.

If you want more space apart from 1TB of space, you can buy additional storage from Microsoft. In fact, you can also buy unlimited storage for your organization.

Whatever the license plan you have, the space limit for SharePoint Online site collection is 25TB.

How to Check SharePoint online storage limits

Now, let us see, how to check SharePoint Online storage limits.

Open the SharePoint Online admin center and then expand Sites -> Active sites.

In the Active sites page, you can see in the right corner the total used space out of the allocated space like below:

This is how we can get sharepoint online site storage at the tenant level. This is how we can view the total and the available SharePoint storage space for your organization.

Site collection storage metrics SharePoint Online

Now, let us see how to get site collection storage metrics SharePoint online. If you want to get the SharePoint Online site collection storage metrics, follow the below steps:

Open the SharePoint Online site collection, then click on the gear or settings icon, and then click on Site Information. And then click on View all site settings.

Then in the Site settings page, click on Storage Metrics which is under Site Collection Administration.

Then you can see the site collection storage metrics in SharePoint online like below:

You can see the SharePoint Online site collection storage used out of 25TB.

Note: The files or items presented in the SharePoint recycle bin will be counted towards the storage quota.

SharePoint online storage capacity (25TB vs 1TB)

Are you confused with a SharePoint Online site collection limit of 25TB limit that looks like above vs the total space of 1TB allocated to an Organization when you sign up?

As I have explained above, 1TB is the default space that you will get when you will subscribe to an Office 365 plan.

Then how come, the SharePoint Online site collection storage metrics show out of 25TB. Actually, the 25TB is the hard limit for a SharePoint Online site collection.

Ideally, if you are expecting your site to grow more than the hard limit of 25TB, then ideally you should split and try to store in logically different site collections.

Manage SharePoint Online Site Storage Limits

Now. let us see how to manage SharePoint Online site storage limits as a SharePoint administrator or as a global administrator.

Open the SharePoint Online admin center, then click on Settings -> then click on Site storage limits like below:

This will open the Site storage limits, where you have the option to manage the site storage. There are two ways you can manage the storage limit.

• Automatic – SharePoint will manage the site storage automatically, meaning your site will use as much as they needed.
• Manual – In the case of a manual option, your site collection administrator will allocate space for each site collection.

If you want to set any specific limit for every site collection in your tenant, then you can choose the Manual option like below:

Once you enable the manual option, then you will get the option to allocate storage for a particular site collection in SharePoint Online.

Manage particular SharePoint Online site collection storage limit

Now, let us see how we can manage individual site collection storage in SharePoint Online.

Open the SharePoint Online admin center, then click on Sites -> Active sites.

Then on the Active sites page, you can see select a site, and then you will see the Storage option in the command bar.

This will open the Edit storage limit page where you can see the option to change or allocate the storage limit.

Here you can specify a value in terms of GB in the Maximum storage for this site option.

You can also select the option Allow notifications and specify the Email owners when this much of the storage limit is used.

Here when the SharePoint site storage limit touches 98% then it will send an email to the SharePoint site owners.

This is how we can manage particular SharePoint Online site collection storage limit.

Now, when you open the SharePoint Online site collection and navigate to the SharePoint Storage Metrics in the Site settings page.

There you can see now, it is showing 4.98 GB free of 5.00 GB that we have allocated for the SharePoint Online site collection.

Allocate space while creating a new SharePoint site collection

Once you enable Manual storage management, while creating a new SharePoint Online site collection, you will have the option to provide space (in GB) for a particular site collection.

While creating a SharePoint Online team site or any other site, you can provide the Storage limit in GB in Advanced settings.

This is how we can allocate space while creating a new SharePoint site collection in Office 365.

SharePoint online storage pricing

Are you looking at information for SharePoint online storage cost per GB? Let us see the SharePoint Online storage pricing.

The SharePoint online storage cost per GB is ~0.18 dollar per GB per month. In INR it is around 13.22 gigabyte/month.

How to add additional storage to your Office 365 subscription

If you are running out of space for your organization, then you can add additional storage to your Office 365 subscription.

Follow the below steps to add additional storage to your Office 365 subscription.

Open the Office 365 admin center, then go to Billing -> Purchase services.

Then in the Purchase services page, click on Add-ons like below:

Then scroll down to Office 365 Extra File Storage like below:

Click on the Details button and then you can see the Buy option.

From there, you can add additional storage for your Office 365 subscription.

If you have any of the below Office 365 plans, then you can add extra file storage.

• Office 365 Enterprise E1, E2, E3, E4 and E5
• Office for the web with SharePoint Plan 1 and Plan 2
• SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Plan 2
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium
• Microsoft 365 E3, E5
• Microsoft 365 F1

Get SharePoint online site storage PowerShell

Now, let us see how to get SharePoint Online site storage using PowerShell.

We will use here SharePoint Online management shell and I will run the PowerShell script in Windows PowerShell ISE.

Below is the PowerShell script to get SharePoint Online site storage in PowerShell.

Connect-SPOService -Url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ –Credential (Get-Credential)
Get-SPOSite

You can see the SharePoint storage quota for each site collection.

Change SharePoint Online Site Collection Storage Quota using PowerShell

Now, let us see how to change SharePoint Online site collection storage quota using PowerShell (SharePoint Online management shell).

Microsoft provides Set-SPOSite PowerShell cmdlets to change the site collection storage quota in SharePoint Online.

Connect-SPOService -Url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ –Credential (Get-Credential)
Set-SPOSite -Identity https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/EnjoySharePoint -StorageQuota 10240

Here, you need to provide the StorageQuota in MB.

For example, For if you want to set 10GB for a site collection, then you need to provide 10240 like the above.

Once you run the above PowerShell script, then the site collection storage space will be changed to 10GB like below:

Set Storage Quota for all SharePoint Online Sites using PowerShell

If you want to set storage quota for all SharePoint Online sites using PowerShell, run the following PowerShell script.

Connect-SPOService -Url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ –Credential (Get-Credential)
$sites = Get-SPOSite -Limit All

Foreach ($site in $sites)
{
   Set-SPOSite -Identity $site.URL -StorageQuota 10240
}

Once you run the PowerShell script, then 10GB will be allocated to all the SharePoint sites.

How to set SharePoint Online Site Storage Quota using PnP PowerShell

We can also set SharePoint Online Site Storage Quota using PnP PowerShell.

Connect-PnPOnline –Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/EnjoySharePoint –Credentials (Get-Credential)
Set-PnPTenantSite -Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/EnjoySharePoint -StorageMaximumLevel 10240

Or

Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/EnjoySharePoint -UseWebLogin
Set-PnPTenantSite -Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/EnjoySharePoint -StorageMaximumLevel 10240

Once you run the above PowerShell script, the SharePoint Online Site Storage Quota will changed to 10GB.

Increase SharePoint Online Storage Quota using PowerShell

We will see how to Increase SharePoint online Storage Quota in Office 365 using PowerShell.

This demonstration will be applied for SharePoint Online, Office 365 Admin, and Office 365 Small Business Admin.

As we know when a site collection is created in SharePoint online, we must specify a storage quota. This site size value must be between 100 MB and 100 GB.

SharePoint Online Site Collection Quota is allocated a quantity of storage that’s based on your number of users. The storage is available to all site collections in the tenant and serves as a central pool from which everyone can draw.

Site quota can be updated and modify as per requirement. If you are Global admin for Office 365 tenant or Site collection administrator you will have access to do it.

Example: If you are managing a site collection, it will be easy to check site quota and increase the same, if working in the organization as SharePoint online Administrator where more than 1000+ site collection are existing and on daily basis, we keep getting requests to update site collection quota.

This is something where we need more attention and human effort to work on the same request.

Below are the steps to perform the above activity step by step with the screenshot:

Open PowerShell ISE with Admin rights and copy below script

As mentioned in last articles, we always need to do changes of the defined variable as per your requirement. Here we need to update below details,

• $UserName = User Name of your Office 365 account – Line 7
• $Password = Your Account password – Line 8
• $Site URL – Site URL of Office 365 SharePoint Online where you increase site quota – Line 17
• Read-Host “Enter the SharePoint Online Tenant” – Line 3
• Tenant URL
• $Quota=Read-Host “Enter the Storage Quota (1 GB) to be increased [in GB]: – Line 18

See below screenshot for more details:

Import-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.Powershell
Write-Host "This script is to set Storage Quota" -f DarkGreen
Read-Host "Enter the SharePoint Online Tenant"
Write-Host "Connecting to SharePoint Online Tenant"
$UserName="Your Account Name"
$Password ='Password'
#Setup Credentials to connect
$Credentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($UserName,(ConvertTo-SecureString $Password -AsPlainText -Force))
Connect-SPOService -Url "Office 365 Tenant" -Credential $Credentials
Write-Host "Your Tenant is connected"
$SiteUrl=Read-Host "Enter the site Collection URL to which you want to increase storage quota"
[int]$Quota=Read-Host "Enter the Storage Quota (1 GB)to be increased [in GB]:"
$siteUrlDetail= Get-SPOSite $SiteUrl -Detailed -Limit all
[int]$CurrentStorage= $siteUrlDetail.StorageQuota
if ($Quota -eq 5)
{
Write-Host "Current Storage Quota is: $([MATH]::Round($CurrentStorage/1024,2)) GB"
[int]$NewStorage = $Quota * 1024
$StorageToIncrease = $CurrentStorage + $NewStorage
Set-SPOSite -Identity $SiteUrl -StorageQuota $StorageToIncrease
$NewSite = Get-SPOSite $SiteUrl -Detailed
$NewQuota = [MATH]::Round($NewSite.StorageQuota/1024,2)
Write-Host "New Storage Quota is : $NewQuota GB"
}
else
{
Write-Host "You have entered the wrong value.As per Defined policy, Please enter 1 GB only for Sites" -f Red
}

Once you have done with changes or modification of defined variables, click on F5 and wait for below screen to come up ask you to enter Office 365 URL, see below screenshot:

After the site is getting connected, it will prompt for the Site collection where you want to increase site Quota.

Later this entry, PowerShell script will start action to check the existing site quota and it will match with defined standard quota if the Site quota is exceeded than standard limitation it will prompt to enter the site quota.

Now you can see, your SharePoint site quota has been changed and it will show the current quota size of site collection as well.

This is how to increase SharePoint Online Storage Quota using PowerShell.

How to increase Office 365 SharePoint Online site storage quota (Classic Admin Center)

If you are still using SharePoint Online classic admin center, follow the step on how to increase SharePoint Online site storage quota through the Office 365 admin center.

Nowadays lots of small to medium organizations are using Office 365 SharePoint Online. Instead of building its own SharePoint on-premise environment, it is better to use the SharePoint online Office 365 site (advantages in terms of cost and features).

• SharePoint Online vs SharePoint on-premise

We can create various site collections in SharePoint Online. While creating the site collection in SharePoint online we need to provide the storage quota but sometimes that may increase and we may need to increase individual site collection storage limits.

We can increase the Office 365 SharePoint online site storage quota from the SharePoint Admin center.

Recently one of my SharePoint online sites shows no space issue. When I checked in the SharePoint Admin Center, I saw that 95% space already used. It looks like below:

Open Office 365 Admin Center and then from the left side click on Admin Centers -> SharePoint which will open the SharePoint Admin Center.

Then from the SharePoint admin center, click on “site collections” from the left side. Then select the particular site for which you want to increase the storage quota. Once you select, click on the Storage Quota button from the ribbon-like below:

Then it will open the “set storage quota” dialog box. Here setup the Limit storage quota for each selected site collection to a maximum of GB. See fig below for reference.

Additional Tags: increase SharePoint storage office 365, increase storage quota SharePoint office 365, SharePoint online storage quota, Office 365, SharePoint Online

Then it will increase the storage for the selected SharePoint Online site collection. Here we saw how we can increase the SharePoint site storage quota.

You may like the following SharePoint tutorials:

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• SharePoint Online regional settings
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• SharePoint alerts – Create and Manager Alerts in List or Library
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• How to give unique permission to a folder in SharePoint Online document library
• Difference between team site and publishing site in SharePoint
• Team site and publishing site in SharePoint 2016/2019
• Microsoft has enabled security defaults to keep your account secure Office 365
• your organization needs more information to keep your account secure office 365

Conclusion

I hope this SharePoint tutorial helps us to understand SharePoint Online storage limits and below points:

• SharePoint Online storage limits
• How to Check SharePoint online storage limits
• Site collection storage metrics SharePoint Online
• SharePoint online storage capacity (25TB vs 1TB)
• Manage SharePoint Online Site Storage Limits
• Manage particular SharePoint Online site collection storage limit
• Allocate space while creating a new SharePoint site collection
• SharePoint online storage pricing
• How to add additional storage to your Office 365 subscription
• Get SharePoint online site storage PowerShell
• Change SharePoint Online Site Collection Storage Quota using PowerShell
• Set Storage Quota for all SharePoint Online Sites using PowerShell
• How to set SharePoint Online Site Storage Quota using PnP PowerShell
• How to increase Office 365 SharePoint Online site storage quota (Classic Admin Center)