Published: 19 August 2026. Source: M365 Admin: MC1452372 - Purview Information Protection auto-labeling scale increase
500,000 files a day. That is the new ceiling Microsoft is setting for server-side auto-labeling in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Message Center notification MC1452372 announces a fivefold increase from the current 100,000-file daily limit, rolling out in preview from September 2026 and reaching general availability in October.
For most tenants the change will be invisible. For those running large-scale sensitivity label deployments across hundreds of sites and deep document libraries, it removes a bottleneck that has forced multi-week labeling backlogs to clear one day's quota at a time.
What is auto-labeling in SharePoint Online?
Microsoft Purview Information Protection auto-labeling applies sensitivity labels to content at rest in SharePoint and OneDrive without requiring users to label files themselves. Admins configure conditions in simulation policies in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal - keywords, credit card patterns, trainable classifiers. Once enabled, Purview scans SharePoint libraries and OneDrive accounts continuously and applies labels to matching files automatically.
The daily processing limit controls how many files across the entire tenant can be evaluated and labelled in each 24-hour period. Before this change, any tenant attempting to label more than 100,000 files per day had to wait for the queue to carry over across successive days.
What is changing and when
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Current daily auto-labeling limit | 100,000 files per tenant |
| New daily limit | 500,000 files per tenant |
| Applies to | SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business |
| Admin action required | None - existing policies benefit automatically |
| Public preview | Early to late September 2026 |
| General availability (worldwide) | Early to late October 2026 |
| Message Center ID | MC1452372 |
Who this matters to
Large SharePoint estates hitting the current cap. A tenant with several hundred active sites, where auto-labeling policies target document libraries containing tens of thousands of files each, may have been processing only a fraction of its content per day. Labeling a backlog of two million files at 100,000 per day takes three weeks. At 500,000 per day it takes four days.
Tenants planning a first-time auto-labeling deployment. The higher limit means an initial labeling run across a large existing library will complete much faster. Rather than planning for weeks of staged rollout to avoid the queue, admins can now scope policies broadly from the start.
Regulated industries with broad labeling requirements. Financial services, healthcare, and legal organisations often need to apply sensitivity labels to virtually all document library content for compliance purposes. The old limit made that impractical at tenant scale; the new one makes it achievable within a standard rollout window.
Tenants with fewer than 100,000 files across all SharePoint and OneDrive content will not notice any difference in behaviour. The change is purely a capacity increase at the service level.
What admins should do now
No configuration change is required to receive the increased capacity. Existing active auto-labeling policies continue running as normal and will process up to 500,000 files per day once the feature reaches your tenant's region. Microsoft applies the higher limit at the service level.
For tenants that have not yet set up auto-labeling, this announcement is a prompt to revisit the effort. Three steps before GA in October:
- Open the Microsoft Purview compliance portal and check whether any auto-labeling simulation policies are already configured. Simulation mode runs the policy without applying labels, so you can validate coverage before committing.
- Identify the libraries most in need of labeling. ShareMaster's Report Master can export a list of all site collections with file counts and last activity dates, giving you a prioritised target list before you write your first policy condition.
- Verify your sensitivity label taxonomy is production-ready. Auto-labeling applies labels at the conditions you set; if the label taxonomy is inconsistent or the labels carry encryption settings that will break existing workflows, the labeling run will surface those issues at scale.
For the broader context on how sensitivity labels interact with SharePoint permissions and sharing, see the guide on auditing SharePoint permissions before layering in label-based restrictions.
Source: M365 Admin: MC1452372 - Microsoft Purview Information Protection auto-labeling scale increase for SharePoint and OneDrive. Microsoft 365 Message Center, August 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to change my auto-labeling policy settings after this update?
No. Existing active auto-labeling policies automatically benefit from the increased daily capacity. There are no settings to adjust and no re-publishing required. Microsoft applies the higher limit at the service level.
My tenant has fewer than 100,000 files. Does this update affect me?
Not in a visible way. If your daily auto-labeling runs were completing within the old 100,000-file limit, nothing changes in practice. The increase matters most to organisations with large SharePoint or OneDrive estates where labeling runs were being capped before finishing.
When will the increase be available in my tenant?
Public preview runs from early to late September 2026. General availability for all worldwide tenants is planned for early to late October 2026. Check the Microsoft 365 admin center Message Center for the rollout reaching your specific region.