Managing Your Microsoft OneDrive Storage

Overview

Microsoft 365 provides cloud storage through OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Each account has a storage quota set by the university. Exceeding this limit can impact your ability to save or share files. This guide explains how to check your storage usage and manage it efficiently.

Check Your Storage Usage

START HERE – This link will take you to a listing of your largest files stored in your OneDrive

  • By clicking the button in the left, a toolbar will appear.
  • Using those selections you can manage the selected files.

 

Understand Storage Limits

Due to storage costs, active employees and students have a personal OneDrive site limited to 100 GB by default. Additional storage may be requested within 90% of the storage capacity. Archiving, compressing and deleting unused content is recommended.

 

Best Practices for Managing Storage

By following the guidance below, you can lower your storage use over time.

Clean Up Files

  • Delete old or unnecessary files (e.g., outdated assignments, large videos).
  • Remove duplicate files.
  • Empty the Recycle Bin after deleting files.

 

Move Personal Files

  • University storage is for academic and work-related content only.
  • Move personal photos, videos, or documents to a personal OneDrive or another cloud service.

 

Manage Shared Content

  • Review shared folders and remove outdated files.
  • Stop sharing files that are no longer needed.

 

Optimize Email Storage

  • Delete transitory emails and large attachments.
  • Use links to files in OneDrive instead of sending attachments.

What Happens When You Reach Your Limit

At 100% usage, your account becomes read-only:

That means....

  • You cannot upload new files.
  • Syncing stops.

To restore your functionality delete unneeded files and emails.

 

Need More Space?

Under certain circumstances, for example storage of high risk data, you can submit a request for additional storage room.  Additional storage may be requested within 90% of the storage capacity.

 

Thank you for helping the U of I manage one of our most valuable resources.  Below is a Quick Checklist of ways that can help on an ongoing basis.

✔ Check storage regularly
✔ Delete unnecessary files
✔ Empty recycle bins
✔ Move personal files
✔ Monitor shared folders

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