These are the tools we use to migrate millions of files into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem
Client Director
When you’re planning to migrate files to SharePoint, you’ll quickly establish that you need a tool to support you on that journey. We wouldn’t say the right tool makes a SharePoint migration a breeze – but with the right planning, you can make it as risk-free as reasonably possible.
For a successful SharePoint Migration, our tools selection needs to consider the capability to support:
Before beginning the SharePoint migration, you must have a plan for where your data will go. Check our SharePoint Migration Strategy article and Migration checklist to aid you with this. Design and implement your information architecture before moving to any of the tools below. After all, there’s no point in starting the migration process if you don’t know where your content is going.
We are spoiled for choice when it comes to SharePoint Online migration tools. We’ve reviewed the top migration tools based on our experience, including those which help with the planning and reconciliation processes – TreeSize Professional, SharePoint Migration Tool, ShareGate, and Microsoft Migration Manager. Our SharePoint migration tools list covers the scenarios where they work best and also the pitfalls to watch out for.
Best for: Understanding the data you have on your fileserver / file-share.
Although it’s not a migration tool – TreeSize plays a part in every fileserver migration we deliver. When performing a File-share to SharePoint Online migration, it’s essential to understand the source data you’re moving. Experience shows that with guidance, owners of files are happy to highlight what is active, what needs archiving, and what is no longer needed.
We use TreeSize and extract its output to Excel to help our clients with this task. Without this step, you will end up migrating unnecessary files and cluttering active workspaces with files that could be archived or deleted.
With TreeSize, you can:
What else you need to know:
Best for: SPMT – SharePoint Migration Tool by Microsoft (Free)
SPMT is our go-to tool for File Server to SharePoint Online migrations. Published by Microsoft, as you might expect, their goal is to make your move into Microsoft 365 as easy as possible.
With SPMT, you can:
What else you need to know:
Best for: Tenant-to-tenant migrations, SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online Migrations
ShareGate is our preferred tool for tenant-to-tenant migrations. ShareGate is the most established SharePoint migration tool and is the go-to file transfer solution for many organisations.
ShareGate is excellent at taking source data and dropping it into the target environment. It doesn’t stop there - ShareGate can migrate Microsoft Teams, including additional data, such as message history.
With ShareGate, you can:
What else you need to know:
Best for: Moving from competing cloud Services to SharePoint Online
After its acquisition, Mover.io became Microsoft Migration Manager. It is a cloud-based migration service hosted by Microsoft that helps you move away from some of its biggest competitors. This is not an uncommon business need. When we work with fast-growing companies, they often begin their file storage with Dropbox or Google, thanks to the ease of sharing documents on these platforms. But, when the business reaches a point of around 50 employees, they start to look for something with more enterprise features – which is where SharePoint steps in.
With Microsoft Migration Manager, you can migrate from:
What else you need to know:
Best for: Validating every file has been moved following a file-server migration
No migration tool is perfect, files get left behind, and it only takes one missing file for trust to be lost in the migration process, which is why reconciling your data and validating your migration execution is essential.
We use PowerShell to query the file source and destination environment to create a full report of the location of every file. We can compare our datasets through pivot tables and Excel scripts to quickly establish if any files have failed to migrate.
With PowerShell + Excel, we’re able to:
What else you need to know:
Small volumes of files can be moved to SharePoint simply by syncing a SharePoint library with OneDrive and dragging files across. For multiple libraries or high volumes of documents (1000+), you’ll want to consider a migration tool – some of which are free, as we have outlined in our article.
No, Microsoft’s SharePoint Migration Tool only copies files. This allows you to perform a practice migration without impacting your source data. We recommend backing up your source data after any migration, “just in case".
While it’s possible to perform a bulk + incremental migration, we don’t recommend it – this is because SPMT cannot identify new files versus those which have been moved, renamed or deleted.
Client Director
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You’re looking to migrate to SharePoint Online, but unsure where to start, or if this is something you should be taking on yourself? It’s a feeling that many of our clients have experienced, and we’re familiar with addressing those common concerns before beginning a SharePoint online migration project.
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