This article will direct you to instructions and tools to help you manage your storage utilization at the UI.

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.

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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 have a university OneDrive site limited to 100 GB, and students have a limit of 50 GB  by default. Additional storage may be requested within 90% of the storage capacity. Archiving, compressing and deleting unused content is recommended.

 

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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• Delete old or unnecessary files (e.g., outdated assignments, large videos).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• Review shared folders and remove outdated files.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.

If You Can't See What's Using Up Your Storage

You may observe that you have run out of space, but when looking in OneDrive, you only see a few files.

When it's not obvious where your storage is being consumed, look for one large file that has several versions. Each version of a file uses its own file storage space, so if you have a 1 GB PowerPoint file with ten versions, it will cumulatively consume 10 GB of storage.

You can check this in Storage Metrics. 

1. Go to onedrive.uidaho.edu and click the gear icon  for Settings. 
2. From the drop-down menu, select OneDrive Settings.                     
3. From the left-hand menu, click More Settings.  
4. Under the Features and storage section, click Storage Metrics. 
5. In Storage Metrics, you will find on the far right side of each individual file, the Version History link.
6. Click one you want to clean up.
7. On the next page, center left, you will see Delete All Versions. This will delete all versions and free up storage.

This problem often occurs with PowerPoint files containing large images. The images can quickly add up to a lot of storage. See Microsoft's Reduce the size of your PowerPoint presentations for more information. 

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.

At this point you will need to Submit a Request to have someone from OIT assist you with deleting your data.  

 

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