TechTips - How to Change the Maximum Upload Size for SharePoint 2007

I had a user who was calling daily to say that his files weren't always uploading properly to our SharePoint 2007 website. He would call typically around the same time of day so I at first attributed it to network problems or high traffic times that were causing the problem. He kept calling so I decided to look more into it and I found that the failure was happening anytime the file was over 2GB in size. My first thought was that SharePoint 2007 is limiting file upload size to less than 2GB. I was right and in this article I am going to explain how to change this setting and some of the implications of making this change.

You might be thinking why I would even want to limit the upload size for a user or group of users. Well there are plenty of good reasons to limit the size of files users can upload. My reason for limiting the size of files they can upload is disk space, if a user is uploading 4-8GB files daily, how quickly is my storage space is going to get filled up? You might have a different reason, possibly security or even bandwidth usage; you don't want a guy uploading 15GB during peak hours of the day. This can really put a drag on your bandwidth.

Whatever the reason might be there is a simple solution; you can change the upload maximum size in SharePoint 2007 by following these steps:

Open Central Admin

Click Application Tab

Click Web application general settings (SharePoint Web Application Management Section)

Click Web Application Drop Down

Click Change Web Application

Click Web Application you want to change settings for

Scroll down to Maximum Upload Size Text box

Change size (this is measured in MB keep that in mind, I set mine to 2000MB)

Scroll to the bottom

Click OK

That is all there is to changing the maximum upload size limit in SharePoint 2007. I have mine set to 2000MB or 2GB, this gives my users plenty of room for big files, and if they need more I can temporarily increase this (by following steps above and then changing it back after they are done uploading the file) so they can upload even larger files. I have only had to increase my 2GB once since I set it, look at the types of files your users upload and set your upload size accordingly.

I hope this guide helps you to get your Maximum Upload size set properly and if you were having problems with users uploading big files this should fix the problem.