How to Check How Much Data You Have in OneDrive and SharePoint

To check how much data your company has in Microsoft 365, use two reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center: the OneDrive usage report for each person’s work files, and the SharePoint site usage report for team and company sites. Both show how many files you have and how much storage they use, and both export to a spreadsheet.

OneDrive is Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Drive. In most companies, though, shared work lives in SharePoint, and files posted in Microsoft Teams channels are stored in the team’s SharePoint site. Check both, or you’ll undercount.

Why the size and age of your files matter

Volume and years of history are two of the four things that set the price of a dataset; the other two are data type and current demand (how pricing works). Ten years of project folders, contracts and reports is a deeper dataset than two, even at the same headcount.

So you need how much (file counts and storage) and how far back (the year of your oldest files).

Who can run these reports

Microsoft lets several admin roles view usage reports, including Global Administrator, SharePoint Administrator, Teams Administrator and Reports Reader (Microsoft Learn). Reports Reader is the safest choice if you’re asking someone to run this for you, because it reads reports without changing settings.

Reports usually become available within 24 to 72 hours of the activity, so the newest uploads may be missing.

Step 1: Count OneDrive files and storage

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Select Reports. If you don’t see it, select Show all first.
3. Select Usage.
4. Under Reports, select OneDrive, then the Usage tab.

The table lists each OneDrive with these columns (Microsoft Learn):

• Files: the number of files in the OneDrive
• Active files: files used during the period you picked
• Storage used (MB)
• Last activity date (UTC)

Select Export to download it as a CSV file, then add up Files and Storage used (MB).

The report only includes users with a valid OneDrive license, and deleted users stay in it for 180 days.

Step 2: Count SharePoint files and storage

1. In Reports > Usage, select SharePoint.
2. Open the Site usage tab.

Each site has Files, Active files, Storage used (MB) and Last activity date (UTC), plus a Root Web Template column (Microsoft Learn). Export it, then use Root Web Template to group sites by type, for example to separate sites that belong to Teams from others.

You can get the same per-site numbers from the SharePoint admin center: go to Sites > Active sites, select a site and open the Activity tab to see the number of files and storage used (Microsoft Learn). Active sites leaves out OneDrive and Teams channel sites, so the usage report is the more complete count.

Step 3: Leave names hidden

By default, the reports conceal user, group and site names (Microsoft Learn). A Global Administrator can turn that off, but you don’t need to. An inventory needs totals, not who owns what.

Step 4: Find out how far back your files go

The usage reports show current file counts and storage, but trends only for the last 7, 30, 90 or 180 days. They don’t show how old your files are.

To find that out, open your largest SharePoint sites and OneDrives (the top rows of your exported reports) and sort each document library by its Modified date, oldest first. Note the year of the oldest material that’s still in use or worth keeping. Ask the owner of each large site to do the same for theirs.

Check a single OneDrive

If you’re not an admin, you can still check your own work OneDrive (Microsoft Support):

• On the web: sign in with your work account. Your storage use and available space appear in the left pane. Select it to see your largest files.
• In the Windows sync app: select the OneDrive icon in the notification area, then the gear icon, Settings and Manage storage.

What to write down

Measure	Where to find it
OneDrive files and storage, total	Reports > Usage > OneDrive > Usage tab, exported
SharePoint files and storage, total and per site	Reports > Usage > SharePoint > Site usage tab, exported
Number of active OneDrives and sites	Same exports, counting rows with recent activity
Year of your oldest files	Largest libraries sorted by Modified date

Rounded numbers are fine. A hypothetical note like “about 1.2 million files, 900 GB, 60 active sites, files back to 2015” is all an estimate needs.

What to leave out at this stage

You don’t need to open, export or send any files to take this inventory. When a company does decide to sell, it exports only the sites, folders and date ranges it chooses, and data about people is de-identified before any buyer sees it.

Some files may be off limits regardless of size, such as documents covered by customer confidentiality terms. Our rights check covers what to review, and you should confirm anything you’re unsure about with counsel.

Next steps

• Count your chat history too: Microsoft Teams and Slack.
• Using Google Workspace as well? See how to check how much data you have in Google Drive.
• List every business tool your company uses with Take inventory, then request an estimate.