How to reduce the number of items in the TFS workspace

Question

I get the following,

TF401190: The local workspace XXXXXX;XXXXXX has 353943 items in it, 
which exceeds the recommended limit of 100000 items. To improve 
performance, either reduce the number of items in the workspace, 
or convert the workspace to a server workspace.

but how to reduce the number of items in the workspace?

I've consulted the following articles but still a bit loss.

• https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/phkelley/2013/05/28/server-workspaces-vs-local-workspaces/
• https://mattyrowan.com/2014/07/21/tfs-local-workspace-limit/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/tfvc/optimize-your-workspace?view=vsts

Answer 1

Some options:

1. Change your workspace mappings to pull down fewer files. (Either map fewer things into your workspace to start with or set up what is known as cloaking for the parts of the workspace that you are not using.) This may not be an option if the project simply contains a lot of files and they're all required.
2. Change your workspace type to a Server workspace
3. Ignore the warning -- it's a warning, not an error. It's only a problem if performance is unacceptable.

Answer 2

This is the only way I've found to reduce the number of "local workspace" items. If I just delete the items on my local machine, TFS never knows this, and the "local workspace" number never goes down.

The answer is, if you do a "Get Specific Version..." on the files [in Source Control Explorer], and select Changeset 1, the files will be deleted locally and the server will know this. The color of the file in the Source Control explorer will go from black to gray and will have the phrase "Not downloaded" in the latest column.

Source