Tips to reduce your OneDrive storage quota

Each licensed Microsoft 365 (M365) employee user is allotted 100 GB of storage in Microsoft's OneDrive app at the University. It is recommended that OneDrive quotas are regularly reviewed and cleaned up (i.e., kept below the allocated storage quota).

OneDrive and other University cloud storage services are provided for University business purposes only. Please do not use them to store personal items such as family photos, videos, or music.

1 Sign in to OneDrive
2 Related articles
- 2.1 Need help?
- 2.2 Article feedback

Sign in to OneDrive

Sign in with your work account via the M365 Portal.
Click on the App Launcher in the upper left side of the screen.
Select OneDrive.

Empty the Recycle bin

It is good practice to clear the Recycle bin each month and just before you do any housekeeping. If you accidentally delete anything, you have 30 days to retrieve it, and it will be easier to find it if the Recycle bin is otherwise empty.

Click on Recycle bin on the left-hand menu and then select Empty Recycle bin above the list of files.

There is a second-stage Recycle bin that holds files for a short period from which you can retrieve files. The second-stage Recycle bin does not count towards your limit.

Remove out-of-date files

Before you start deleting files, review the University’s document management and retention policies.

Look through the files and folders and decide what can be deleted. To delete a file, it can be done from My Files within OneDrive online, or from Windows Explorer, which deletes the local copy and will result in the online copy also being deleted.

Move personal files to a personal storage location

OneDrive for Business is provided for University business only. Personal files should be stored in a private OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, USB stick or other personal solution.

Personal files stored in your University OneDrive will be lost should you leave the University.

If you store semi-private files on OneDrive for Business (e.g., resume, performance appraisals, payslips), create and store these documents in a top-level folder called Personal. This will make it much easier to take a copy of them should you leave the University. It also allows you to easily identify how much space these files are occupying.

Review shared files

If collaboration on a document is no longer required, that document should be removed from OneDrive and stored in a SharePoint site.

Review which documents you currently share and with whom.
Determine whether or not the document is still needed.
1. If not, delete the file.
Determine whether or not the document still needs to be shared.
1. If not, move the file to a SharePoint site.

Move files to a SharePoint or Teams

Under OneDrive, select My files.
Select the files you would like to move.
Click Move To from the menu at the top of the page and select the SharePoint site where they will be moved to. Make sure you follow that site so it appears under Quick access. You may need to click More places to see other SharePoint sites.
Once moved, the documents will be deleted from your OneDrive.
If you have many documents to move, you may either want to do it in smaller batches, or use the Copy To option (instead of Move To) and delete the documents after you have checked that they have all safely arrived at their SharePoint destination.

Sort and delete old or duplicate files

Organize and remove old files you own, and remove any shortcuts linked to files or folders you no longer wish to collaborate on.

Find the largest and oldest documents

To identify large files, sort files by size and delete those you own that are no longer needed. To find and display large files in your account:

Go to your OneDrive account.
On the bottom left corner of the screen, you’ll see how much storage space is currently occupied and how much storage is offered in your current plan. Click on that linked information.
Open a folder, click the pull-down arrow next to the File size column header and click to sort files from Larger to smaller.
Determine whether the largest files need to stay on your OneDrive. Consider:
1. Can they be deleted?
2. If required, they may fit on your SharePoint or Teams site, so you can use the Move feature to move them there.
Next, sort the documents from Oldest to Newer using the pull-down arrow next to the Modified column header.
Determine whether older documents need to stay on your OneDrive. Consider:
1. Can they be deleted?
2. If required, the files may be moved to a SharePoint archive site or a records retention centre.

Please be aware that Microsoft 365 adds folders to your OneDrive when you use certain applications. 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 have a lot of documents that you may not be aware of. Other applications that store files are Notebooks, Office Lens, Team Recordings and Transcribed files, whiteboards, Power Apps, Office Mobile, Voice Captures, Viva Engage/Yammer, Microsoft365 scans, Copilot chat files, Visio Data Visualizer, Personal pages, Microsoft lists, etc.

Remove document versions

Documents may have several versions, each of which take up storage space. To review and remove past versions of a document:

Select the document you would like to review past versions of.
Click the ellipses (…) to the right of the document name and select Version history from the menu.
Click on the document version you wish to delete.

If you are still working on the document, it may be best to remove only the oldest version of the document.

If the document is final, you can delete all earlier versions and retain only the most recent (final) version.

Remove multiple document versions via Storage Metrics

If there are many document versions, the quickest route to remove unneeded document versions is via Storage Metrics.

When logged in to OneDrive, click the gear icon in the top-right corner of the screen, and click OneDrive settings.
Click More settings on the left-hand side menu and select Storage metrics under the Features and storage label.
Click Version history to the right of the document you want to remove document versions for.
Click Delete all versions, which will leave only the latest version of the document.

Remove outdated Microsoft links

With the introduction of Microsoft Lists, another element has been added to your OneDrive site - that is, the SharePoint site around the Document Library known as your OneDrive. Find the Site Contents for your OneDrive with this URL, https://uofwaterloo-my.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx?view=14

Lists will have a file name like “Event_4c67fc13-24ce-4440-9dfc–5582bdd052d8″ and you can delete them by clicking the ellipses (…) after the file name, or from the MicrosoftLists landing page. They don’t often take up much storage space, but removing the links will result in less document clutter.
To move a list to a SharePoint site, try exporting it to Excel and then importing the Excel document in the Microsoft Lists application.

Move or delete Personal SharePoint Pages

Personal SharePoint Pages live in a SitePages library on your OneDrive site. You can find them by using the Site Contents UR. Check if they are still relevant and recreate them in a SharePoint site if they are or should be shared. They don’t often take up much storage space, but removing the content will result in less document clutter.

Clean up your Site Assets Library

With the introduction of Personal SharePoint Pages, you may have images added to your Site Assets library. When you use an image from Web Search, or upload your own, OneDrive will create a new folder called “Site Pages”. This will have one folder per page containing the image(s). This may be a hidden source of growth for your OneDrive site. Open the library and remove the photos you no longer need.

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