In the development of nanostructured V2O3 materials, the topical issue is to elucidate the factors that affect the temperature of a metal-insulator transition (MIT). In this work, we study the structural, magnetic and electrical properties of V2O3 thin-walled microsphere prepared by spray-pyrolysis (SP). Low-temperature XRD and TEM revealed that SP-microspheres contain the anisotropic (50×20 nm) nanocrystallites with a preferred (001)-orientation along the sphere surface and show moderate biaxial compressive stresses. SP-aggregates exhibit a high concentration of intercrystallite boundaries and inner pores, which induce high lattice microstrains. Structural, magnetic and electrical properties showed no evidence of MIT down to 100 K. NMR investigations indicated that antiferromagnetic areas appear at temperatures below 115 K. Comparative studies were performed on V2O3 50 nm nanoparticles prepared by thermolysis using the same parent vanadyl solution. The findings suggest that a high defect concentration and microstrains rather than compressive stresses lead to the suppression of MIT.