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Attachments / File Storage

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Posted on by ctedesco3307

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I've always been told to use SharePpoint Integrations for housing attachments and files with dataverse for model driven apps. reason being dataverse does not store documents well many large files cause performance issues. Seems like recently it's been tuned up a bit - wanted to ask for input on pros and cons for storing attachments in davaverse vs SharePoint?

Storage management in Dataverse and finance and operations apps - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

https://powergi.net/blog/file-columns/

Thanks in advance

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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Ram Prakash Duraisamy 5,753 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @ctedesco3307

One more thing, if we store in SharePoint the licensing cost will be too less compared to Dataverse.

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WarrenBelz 154,930 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @ctedesco3307,

A bit of a summary below

SharePoint Pros

SharePoint storage is significantly less expensive compared to Dataverse (Dataverse storage is billed per GB).

SharePoint has Rich Document Management - versioning, metadata, co-authoring, sharing, compliance features (retention labels, eDiscovery, DLP). Dataverse does not have versioning, check-in/check-out, metadata, or collaboration tools.

SharePoint handles very large file volumes and sizes (up to 250 GB per file). Dataverse attachments still have limits (typically 128 MB for files via API, larger sizes only via specialized columns). Also Dataverse while optimized, storing lots of large files can still bloat your database and impact query performance.

SharePoint has integration with M365: Files are natively available in Teams, OneDrive, and Office apps.

Dataverse pros

Dataverse has Unified Data Storage: Everything (records + files) stays in Dataverse, so security, auditing, and compliance policies are consistent.

Dataverse performance of file/image storage has been tuned, with better streaming and storage optimization than a few years ago.

Dataverse would offer simpler development - no need to configure SharePoint integration, document libraries, or sync permissions.

SharePoint would require more complexity in setup configuring the SharePoint integration with Dataverse and managing document locations.

Permissions between Dataverse and SharePoint aren’t automatically synced - you may need extra work to keep access consistent.

Your data is split - business data in Dataverse, files in SharePoint. This can complicate reporting/search.

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Fubar 8,487 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Adding to Warren's response - also consider where the files need to accessed e.g. where the user needs the file does the user have access to SharePoint or do you need to build additional interface/integration - it is less an issue if using the standard SharePoint integration, but have seen where the url to the file after it is moved to SharePoint is written back to a dataverse record so the user can click the link to get to the file.

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developerAJ 4,763 on at

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One more point to consider is that SharePoint storage is very cost-effective, and in most cases, additional storage purchase isn’t required. On the other hand, with Dataverse, if you already have file storage included with your licenses its fine, but you need to purchase file storage separately, which can be quite expensive. Note: In Dataverse we got two storage normal table, and another is file storage you need file storage for attachments. This has been a key deciding factor for many of my clients

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