Advice on SP2013 Contact list with over 5000 items to work as Lookup for document information panel

Question

Disclaimer: I am completely new to Sharepoint and web design.

Sharepoint 2013, on-premises. The company needs to have multiple document libraries and it is necessary to be able to tag documents with the Client name. There is a custom Contact list which has a Client site column which I would like to use in all libraries as a Lookup column. This is working but the Contact List is not complete and when it IS completed, it will have around 6000 names.

I know I can change the 5000 item limit but I also know it isn't advised to do so.

The default view which the document info panel uses needs to show all Client names, so modifying it to show a subset of names won't work.

Recommendations? Do I ask them to try and whittle down that Contact list (I can hear the complaints already... and even if they trim it, how long before it reaches 5000 again)? Since it's 'just' a Contact list, should I bump the threshold limit up to 8 or 10 thousand? Is it possible to select a Client and then create a document, in that way having the metadata for Client already present? Any feedback or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Going up to 10000 is not going to really hurt anything as long as you dont have large files in there. You can up the amount of the list view threshold in an on-premise SharePoint going into Central Admin. You can store up to 30mil items in a list/library depending on columns and content, so your SharePoint will be fine with more than 20000 records (SharePoint 2013 Boundries and Limits). If you are going to go beyond the list view threshold, you need to index columns within your library.

This wont prevent your library/list from going over the threshold, but it will improve performance, and is recommended for any lists or libraries which will exceed 20000 items. This should work well for you since you will have about 6000.