SharePoint Manager Plus brings SharePoint reporting into a centralized console, helping administrators review and manage their environments without relying on fragmented native workflows. Its Inactive Files report identifies files that have not been modified within a selected period and provides the context needed for life cycle, storage, and governance reviews.
Why you need a report to monitor inactive files
SharePoint files can remain unchanged for long periods after projects, meetings, and short-term collaboration activities end. Some may no longer be needed, while others may still serve as reference material, published records, templates, or content subject to retention requirements. Microsoft states that Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents work best when SharePoint and OneDrive content is well-governed, relevant, and securely accessible, making stale-content cleanup a prerequisite for reliable AI-assisted search and response quality.
SharePoint library views, Microsoft Purview content search, APIs, and PowerShell can help administrators find files based on modification dates. However, these workflows are generally library-scoped, search-oriented, or script-driven. A dedicated inactive files report consolidates files that meet a selected inactivity threshold with ownership, size, permission, checkout, and location details in one view.
The inactive files report in SharePoint Manager Plus helps administrators:
- Prepare files for content-owner review: Identify files that meet the selected inactivity threshold and route them to appropriate owners before taking life cycle action.
- Prioritize storage reviews: Filter inactive files by size to identify content that may warrant further assessment as part of storage-management efforts.
- Review files with unique permissions: Identify inactive files whose permissions differ from their parent libraries, then update or remove access that no longer aligns with governance requirements.
- Review long-standing checkouts: Find inactive files that remain checked out and contact the user holding the checkout to determine whether it should be retained, checked in, or discarded.
- Support Copilot content-readiness reviews: Ask content owners to confirm whether older files remain accurate, relevant, and appropriately accessible before retaining or removing them.
What is the Inactive Files report in SharePoint Manager Plus?
The Inactive Files report identifies files in a selected SharePoint site collection that have not been modified within a defined period. It shows key details such as each file's location, creator, last editor, size, unique-permission status, and checkout state.
What does the Inactive Files report show?
Using SharePoint Manager Plus, you can filter the Inactive Files report with the following fields:
- Farm: Select the SharePoint farm or Microsoft 365 tenant from which you want to retrieve inactive file data.
- Site: Select one or more sites to focus the review on a particular team, department, or project environment.
- Inactive period: Specify the number of days a file must remain unmodified to be included in the report.
The Inactive Files report displays the following details for each file in the selected scope:
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Site URL | The SharePoint site containing the file. |
| List Title | The document library or list containing the file. |
| Object Name | The name of the inactive file. |
| Location | The file's folder path within the document library. |
| Created By | The user who created or uploaded the file. |
| Created Date | The date and time the file was created in SharePoint. |
| Modified On | The date and time the file was last modified. |
| Author | The value stored in the file's SharePoint author field. |
| Editor | The user who most recently modified the file. |
| Current Size | The file's current size, useful for prioritizing storage reviews. |
| Unique Permission | Indicates whether the file has permissions that differ from its parent library. |
| Checked Out Status | Indicates whether the file is currently checked out. |
| Checked By | The user who currently holds the checkout. |
| Hierarchy Level | Shows where the file sits within the library's folder structure. |
Native SharePoint reporting and PowerShell vs. SharePoint Manager Plus
SharePoint administrators can find older files through document-library views, Microsoft Purview content search, APIs, and PowerShell. These native options are useful, but they are typically scoped to individual libraries, designed around search results, or dependent on custom scripts.
PowerShell can retrieve modification dates and other file attributes across sites. However, tenant-wide reporting may require administrators to establish connections, iterate through document libraries, apply date filters, handle paging and permissions, format the output, and maintain the script over time.
SharePoint Manager Plus provides a centralized report that combines inactive-file discovery with key governance details and built-in filtering, export, scheduling, and delivery.
| Capability | SharePoint admin center | PowerShell | The SharePoint Manager Plus advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Report accessibility | ❌ Manual filtering is required every time. | ❌ Script execution is required for every run. | ✅ Get one-click access to categorized reports. |
| Custom reports | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ Create custom reports by saving granular, attribute-based conditional filters. |
| Report exports | ✅ Reports can be exported only in CSV or JSON formats. | ✅ Requires additional scripting to format and export data. | ✅ Reports can be exported in CSV, HTML, PDF, and XLSX formats. |
| Emailing reports to admins | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ Send report emails to stakeholders and admins in preferred formats. |
| Automated report generation | ❌ This requires technical scripting or separate complex add-ons. | ❌ This requires Task Scheduler or Azure Automation. | ✅ Schedule multiple reports that can be generated, filtered, emailed, and exported between defined periods automatically. |
Features that enhance the Inactive Files report
SharePoint Manager Plus provides several tools to help you review, distribute, and act on inactive-file data.
- Export reports: Download inactive-file details in CSV, PDF, HTML, or XLSX format for content-owner reviews, storage assessments, and governance documentation.
- Automated report generation: Schedule the report to run at defined intervals so newly inactive files are surfaced according to your review cycle.
- Custom reports: Save filters based on inactivity period, site collection, file size, permission state, or checkout status.
- Clear version history: Remove unnecessary file versions from inactive content to reduce storage consumption while retaining the current version.
- Permission management: Update permissions on inactive files whose access no longer aligns with governance requirements, directly from the SharePoint Manager Plus interface.
Reports that complement the Inactive Files report
These SharePoint Manager Plus reports provide more context for life cycle, storage, and access reviews:
- Item Statistics: Shows metadata such as file size, version information, checkout status, and modification dates for active and inactive content.
- Permissions Non Inherited List Items: Identifies files and list items whose permissions differ from their parent objects, helping administrators review access exceptions associated with inactive content.
- SharePoint permission reports: Provide permission details across sites, libraries, and files, helping you understand the broader access structure surrounding inactive files.
- SharePoint site activity reports: Show how frequently sites are modified. Comparing activity data with inactive-file details helps content owners determine whether older files are still relevant, occasionally referenced, or suitable for further life cycle review.
- Storage by Version reports: Show stored file versions and their contribution to storage consumption. These reports help administrators identify inactive files with excessive version history.
Other features of SharePoint Manager Plus
- SharePoint management: Grant, remove, or copy SharePoint permissions, and manage group members in bulk without relying on complex scripts, simplifying your SharePoint administration.
- SharePoint reporting: Access over 140 prebuilt and custom reports for SharePoint—including permissions, site usage, content inventory, and security insights—all from a centralized dashboard.
- SharePoint auditing: Maintain a comprehensive, searchable audit trail of activities across your SharePoint environment, including user actions, permission changes, and content modifications.
- SharePoint alerting: Receive real-time alerts on crucial events such as permission changes, suspicious user activities, site access anomalies, and policy violations.
- Delegated administration: Empower help desk technicians with granular, role-based access to perform specific SharePoint administrative tasks, without elevating native privileges.
- SharePoint migration: Simplify SharePoint migration by enabling seamless content and permission migration across sites and tenants, with minimal downtime and full visibility into migration progress.
