Recently, I am working on an issue with threshold. The problem is that when the user navigates to a view of the document library, it displays the error message “list view threshold is exceeded”. However, in the view, it has no data. The list view threshold limit is 5000 by default for the non-admin user. This limit is not the number of items returned by your query; it is the total number of items the database needs to read to calculate the returned result set. So although the view does not return any result but to calculate the result (no data to show), it needs to access more than 5000 items in the database. To fix the issue, you need to create an index for the column that you use in the filter for the view. Let’s look at the problem in details. You can download a solution to replicate this issue here.

1. Go to Central Admin ==> Web Application Management ==>General Settings==> Click on Resource Throttling

2. Change the list view threshold in web application from 5000 to 2000 so that I can show the problem without loading more than 5000 items into the list.

FROM

TO

3. Go to the page that displays the approved view of the Loan application document set. It displays the message as shown below although I do not have any data returned for this view.

4. To get around this, you need to create an index column. Go to list settings and click on the Index columns.

5. Click on the “Create a new index” link.

6. Select the LoanStatus field as I use this filed as the filter to create the view.

7. After the index is created now I can access the approved view, as you can see it does not return any data.

Notes:

List View Threshold: Specify the maximum number of items that a database operation can involve at one time. Operations that exceed this limit are prohibited.

References:

SharePoint lists V: Techniques for managing large lists

Manage large SharePoint lists for better performance

http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2009/10/27/working-with-large-lists-in-sharepoint-2010-list-throttling.aspx