This is an interesting error message. When trying to see the workflow history of a SharePoint 2010 custom workflow I get the following error message:

 

SharePoint 2010 Workflow history error: “The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold enforced by the administrator.”

 


What was strange was that other workflow histories worked fine, so I went down the path of finding out where the limit was. My first stop was the “hidden” SharePoint history list. There is a good post on this here:

http://www.sharepoint911.com/blogs/laura/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=111

 

So I looked at my list by appending the /yoursite/lists/workflow%20history

 

I added a count column to one of the fields, and it said 12,500. I knew that wasn’t right, so it must be a limit being returned somewhere. I needed to go deeper.

 

I loaded SharePoint 2010 manager from Codeplex onto the server and found that my top secret workflow history list has 108,000 plus items. From my understanding, this list never gets deleted. You might think it gets deleted by using the Workflow Auto Clean up timer job, but apparently only the entry point to it gets deleted if you let the Workflow Auto Clean Up timer job.

 


 

 

Next stop was Central Admin and the Web Applications, Manage Web Applications, General Settings, Resource Throttling. I set the List View threshold over 108000, and this is what happened:

 

 

Success, fixed:

the workflow history items were now showing.

 

Now this does bring up a few unanswered questions, so if a MS workflow expert is reading, please feel free to comment.

-If the hidden workflow history list is never deleted, how can that be a long term scalable solution?

-raising the list threshold will significantly impact database hits on large queries, but how else can a user view the workflow history of a highly used workflow?

-Customers rely on workflow history as an audit point for approvals. It seems there needs to be a more flexible way to save off workflow history on a scheduled basis without everything being written to a master history list.