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How to have more than 100 million entries in a Win32 virtual list view

Nigel Paton 0 Reputation points
2026-04-08T08:48:29.87+00:00

Hi,

We need to manage more than 100 million entries in a Win32 virtual list view but it looks like this is an undocumented limit to the number of entries. Trying to add more than 100 million entries will result in it being capped and only showing up to ~100million. This limitation seems to have been around for a long time according to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2454942/is-winforms-listview-in-virtualmode-limited-to-100-000-000-rows.

Why has this limit not been increased? For a virtual list view the limit should not be capped at all, at least allowing up to maximum of a signed integer (2,147,483,647) would require minimal changes (I assume).

Ideally the control should be updated to allow a 64 bit item index, but that would be a bit more disruptive.

Thanks

Nigel

Windows development | Windows API - Win32

2 answers

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  1. Taki Ly (WICLOUD CORPORATION) 460 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-04-09T06:15:26.5666667+00:00

    Hello @Nigel Paton ,

    Since this behavior is design-related, it is outside the scope of what I can change through this support channel. However, if you would like this limitation to be reviewed or reconsidered, I would recommend submitting feedback through one of the following channels:

    • Contact the product team through Windows Feedback Hub You can submit feedback here: Windows Feedback Hub
    • Submit feedback from the Microsoft Learn documentation page On the left side of the LVM_SETITEMCOUNT message page, there is usually a “Was this page helpful?” section. You can click No, then select Suggest a fix? to share your feedback.

    I hope this information is helpful. If you found my response useful, please follow this guide to leave feedback.

    Thank you.

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  2. Nigel Paton 0 Reputation points
    2026-04-08T15:15:06.6366667+00:00

    Hi,

    Thanks.

    It is stated here https://dotnet.territoriali.olinfo.it/en-gb/windows/win32/controls/lvm-setitemcount#remarks that there is a 100 million entry limit, but not why. A virtual list view passes most of the data handling to the user application so it's unclear why there is this limitation. I'm guessing that working around this problem ourselves would take a considerable amount of effort (e.g. writing our own custom control).

    Thanks

    Nigel

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