Wow, Microsoft. Administration for MS products is already difficult enough, and now we have no documented way to completely disable the Lists service, or even a way to hide specific lists. Most of the issues have already been laid out by users but I'll add them here again for volume.
- Lists is literally just SharePoint lists in a wrapper, which have major limitations. For example, the 5k view limit requires forethought to overcome (e.g. indexing key columns and creating views with specific filters), which end users won't consider - nor should they have to.
- There is no way to hide or restrict which lists appear on the landing page for Lists. Many companies utilize SharePoint Online lists as a data repository, potentially for critical business processes. These data lists are now handed to users on a silver platter to manipulate directly, instead of users interacting with the data via the Power Apps or Power Automate flows that were designed intentionally for a specific user experience.
- Many companies also have major issues with data governance, thanks to shadow-IT - end users creating 'solutions' using Excel files/Access DBs/SharePoint or Teams groups/etc. with little to no oversight, which then suddenly become business critical and are only brought to the IT team when something breaks or hits a Microsoft limitation. Lists is now yet another way for users to generate and manage data outside of business policies or best practices, and IT/admin teams have no ways to get ahead of it.
The 'best' option right now is to try to find some workaround/automation for notifying an admin or IT team when a new list is created, so they can go review and adjust the list as needed or, you know, actually design a viable long-term solution for the user's business case.
If you insist on delivering half-baked 'self-service' products with zero administration options or adequate documentation, you could at the very least provide basic PowerShell commands for disabling services until they can be properly vetted.
Microsoft
