View Limits in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint has always given an organization the ability to define views on a list, so users can quickly find the data they need in the order they need it. And users with the right permission can even create and save their own personal views. Neither of these features is unlimited, of course. Below, we’ll explain the limits, what they mean, and what to do if you push up against (or blow past) them.

Actually, there doesn’t appear to be an actual limit to the number of Public Views. (Except space, but you’ll run into other issues way before you hit the view limit.) What WAS limited in previous versions is how many views are shown in the dropdown list of views.

That limit was 50. Just because they didn’t show up in the list, didn’t mean you couldn’t still have them, though. Each Public View has its own page. If you know the URL to that page, you can get to the view… you just won’t be able to access more than 50 from the dropdown.

And if you didn’t know the URL of the page, you could still get to it from the List Settings page for the list.

But, thankfully, that restriction appears to have been lifted.​​ As you can see in the screenshots above, 53 public views are showing in the ribbon dropdown and in the Views list on the List View Web Part.

Again, there is no limit to the number of Personal Views ​that can be created on a list. Now, here is where we have an actual physical limit on the number of Personal Views per person that can be created. Unlike Public views, there is no separate page for each Personal View.

Instead, there is a separate page for each Person. This page houses ALL of the Personal Views for that person, but only shows one at a time, based on the query string of the view selected. Notice the difference between the ShowWebPart querystring key above and the one below.

SharePoint 2013 View Limits

Because there is a 50 web part limit per page in SharePoint, an individual user may only have 50 Personal Views before this page throws an error.

To fix this, you must click the link in the error, which takes you to the Web Part Maintenance page for that page. Once there, you will have to delete enough views to get the number down to 50 or less.​ All of the web parts will have the same name as the list, so it’s not obvious which one(s) to delete.

#ProTip: Whenever you’re on a Web Part Maintenance page, the web parts are listed in chronological order according to when they were added to the page.

That means the one you just created that caused the page to break is at the very bottom of the page. That should be the one you delete, because it’s probably the one that’s freshest on your mind for how it should work.

It is due to the fact that a PersonalView.aspx is created for each user and each Personal View is added this page as a web part.

The current web part is passed to the page via GUID in the querystring as ShowWebPart.

The Page Web Part limit per page is 50.

Trying to view ANY Personal View once you’ve exceeded the limit will render an error:

The maximum number of Web Parts for all zones on this page has been exceeded.

The web parts listed on the Web Part Maintenance Page are in chronological order of when they were added. Delete the one at the bottom to remove the last one you created.

Consider creating a Public View instead, because… #NoLimits.