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MigrationSharePointTeams

SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams migration

Sites, libraries, files, Teams and the groups behind them — moved between tenants with a permission model somebody has actually decided on, rather than one inherited by accident.

Typical timeline4–8 weeks
From£800 / €950 / $1,000
Largest moved~20 TB
Invoiced inYour currency
01 — Overview

What this engagement is

Mail is a queue of small items. SharePoint is a permissions model, and that is what makes this move different.

The bytes copy reasonably well. What consumes the schedule is deciding what the target structure should be and resolving what does not map: sharing set up ad hoc over a decade, personal permissions on individual folders, links shared with people who left, sites nobody owns any more, and Teams whose underlying groups have drifted from the team that uses them.

Copy that structure into a clean tenant and you have moved the mess rather than the content. It is also the point where a migration tool alone stops being enough, for reasons we have set out separately. Our largest single engagement moved roughly 20 TB of SharePoint alongside 4 TB of mail. The copying was not the hard part.

02 — Outcomes

What you get out of it

01Every site, library, list and document in scope in the target tenant, with version history where the platform preserves it
02A permission model that someone can explain — agreed before the move rather than inherited from it
03OneDrive content moved per user, with the redirect so people find their files where they expect
04Teams and the Microsoft 365 groups behind them recreated, with channels, files and tabs
05Orphaned sites and abandoned content identified, with a decision on each rather than a silent copy
06External sharing reviewed — every link that reaches outside the organisation, listed before it is recreated
07A validation report showing counts and volumes matched between source and target

“We were emailing massive image files back and forth between our design and production teams. They brought that to our attention and suggested OneDrive and SharePoint. Then we noticed a great many spreadsheets and documents saved only on our internal server, with no cloud backup.”

“When some of our sales team deleted product images without understanding what they were doing, the files were retrieved within minutes and we were back up and running.”

03 — Deliverables

What you receive

Content inventory. Sites, libraries, volumes, item counts, last-modified dates and site owners. The last two columns are usually the interesting ones.
Permission and sharing report. Who has access to what, including anonymous links, guest accounts and permissions broken at folder or item level.
Target information architecture. The agreed site and library structure in the destination, with naming conventions.
Mapping document. Source path to target path, so anyone can answer "where did that go" afterwards.
Migration wave plan ordered by department and dependency, not alphabetically.
Validation report comparing item counts and volumes, per site.
User guidance on where files live now and what changed about sharing, ready for your branding.
04 — Plan

How the work unfolds

Week 1

Inventory

Read-only scan of every site, library and OneDrive. Volumes, counts, owners, last activity. Orphaned and abandoned content surfaces here.

Weeks 1–2

Permission and sharing review

Every permission and every external link, listed. This is the stage clients find most valuable and least comfortable, because it shows who can actually see what.

Weeks 2–3

Target architecture

The site and library structure in the destination, agreed on paper. What is consolidated, what is archived, what is left behind.

Weeks 3–6

Migration waves

Content moves department by department while people keep working in the source. Large libraries run in the background.

Per wave

Delta and cutover

A final incremental pass per wave so nothing changed after the copy is lost, then the source made read-only.

Final week

Validation and handover

Counts and volumes compared per site, mapping document issued, users told where things are.

How tangled are the permissions?

Volume matters less than the state of the sharing. Tell us roughly how many sites and whether anyone still owns them, and we will tell you what the review will find before it finds it.

From £800 / €950 / $1,000 · 4–8 weeks
05 — Before we start

What we need from you

Administrative access to SharePoint and OneDrive in both tenants
A named owner for each significant site, or acceptance that unowned sites will be treated as archive
A decision on external sharing in the target — whether existing anonymous links are recreated or retired
Agreement on what is archived rather than migrated
For content under retention or legal hold, compliance sign-off
06 — Working together

Who does what

IT Partner

  • Inventory every site, library and OneDrive across both tenants
  • Produce the permission and external sharing report
  • Design the target information architecture with you
  • Run the migration waves and the incremental passes
  • Validate counts and volumes per site
  • Produce the mapping document and user guidance

Your team

  • Provide administrative access
  • Name site owners, or accept the archive default
  • Decide the target structure — we recommend, you sign
  • Decide what is archived rather than moved
  • Rule on external sharing
  • Tell users, using our draft
07 — Scope

What is not included

×Google Workspace. A different source platform with its own sharing model — see Google Workspace to Microsoft 365.
×Exchange Online mailboxes. A separate move — see email migration.
×Teams private and group chat history. A different mechanism with real limits, scoped separately when it matters to you.
×Rebuilding Power Automate flows and Power Apps bound to migrated sites. Inventoried and pointed at; rework is scoped separately.
×On-premises SharePoint farm decommissioning. See on-premises to cloud.
×Content classification and records management design. A compliance project, not a migration one.
08 — Fine print

Limitations and technical notes

!Version history does not always survive in full. What is preserved depends on the workload and the tool. We state the limits per library during scoping rather than after.
!Permissions broken at item level multiply the work. A library with unique permissions on individual files takes far longer than one with clean inheritance, regardless of size.
!Anonymous sharing links do not migrate. They have to be recreated deliberately, which is a good moment to decide whether they should exist at all.
!Teams are Microsoft 365 groups underneath. What moves and what does not. Moving a team means moving the group, its mailbox, its SharePoint site and its membership — four things that can each be in a different state.
!OneDrive redirect matters more than the content. Known Folder Move, weeks ahead. Users notice a broken sync client long before they notice a missing file.
!Very large libraries and deep folder structures throttle. Item count affects throughput more than total volume does.
09 — Questions

Asked on almost every first call

Does version history come across?

Partly, and it depends on the workload and tool. We tell you which libraries lose history before the move rather than after. Where full history is a legal requirement, we say so and the plan changes.

What happens to external sharing links?

Anonymous links do not migrate and have to be recreated deliberately. We produce a report of every one before the move, which is usually the first time anyone in the organisation has seen that list.

Can Teams be migrated with their files and channels?

Yes — the team, the Microsoft 365 group behind it, its SharePoint site, channels and files. Private and group chat history is a separate mechanism with real limits, which we state during scoping.

How long does it take?

Four to eight weeks for a mid-sized estate. Volume matters less than the state of the permissions: a tidy 5 TB moves faster than a tangled 500 GB.

What does it cost?

From £800 / €950 / $1,000, scaling with the number of sites and the complexity of the permissions. Fixed price, quoted after the inventory. Scoping costs nothing.

Will people lose access to files during the move?

No. Content is copied while the source stays live, then an incremental pass catches anything that changed. The source is made read-only per wave, not all at once.

10 — Related

Worth reading next

Scoping costs nothing

Tell us the shape of it and we will tell you what it involves

Answer the form or write to us. You get back a written scope, a sequence and a fixed price — usually within one business day, and nobody rings you unless you ask.