Docs you create and files you upload have some limits built in.
Documents: 1,024,000 characters, regardless of the number of pages or font size. Uploaded document files that are converted to Google documents format can’t be larger than 2MB.
Spreadsheets: 400,000 cells, with a maximum of 256 columns per sheet. Uploaded spreadsheet files that are converted to Google spreadsheets format can’t be larger than 20MB, and need to be under 400,000 cells and 256 columns per sheet.
If you're close to exceeding size limits, you'll see a message at the top of your spreadsheet that indicates which limit you're about to reach:
- Number of Cells: Total of 400,000 cells across all sheets
- Number of Columns: 256 columns per sheet
- Number of Formulas: 40,000 cells containing formulas
- Number of Tabs: 200 sheets per workbook
- GoogleFinance formulas: 1,000 GoogleFinance formulas
- GoogleLookup formulas: 1,000 GoogleLookup formulas
- ImportRange formulas: 50 cross-workbook reference formulas
- ImportData, ImportHtml, ImportFeed, or ImportXml formulas: 50 functions for external data
- Complexity: VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP formulas tend to be more complex than other functions, and may slow down your spreadsheet. After getting data points through VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP, try re-pasting them as "values only" to reduce spreadsheet size
These size limits also affect the spreadsheets that collect form responses (for example, if you send a survey). To determine the number of responses that a form can take, you need to take into account the number of questions in your form and the number of other cells of data in your spreadsheet.
Presentations: Presentations created in Google Docs can be up to 10MB -- which is about 200 slides. Uploaded presentation files that are converted into Google presentations format can also be up to 10MB.
Drawings: We’ve never seen anyone make a drawing that was too big (but that’s not a dare).
Other files: Files that you upload but don’t convert to Google Docs format can be up to 10GB each.
This upload limit is larger than the free storage space given to each Google Docs user. Every user is given 1GB of free storage space for files, and can purchase additional Google Docs storage to upload larger files.