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Migrating from Classic SharePoint Site to Modern SharePoint Site (SharePoint Online)

OK, so you have made a good decision to shift from classic SharePoint to modern SharePoint!
What's next?
At ShortPoint, we do not provide any tools for migration, however here we have a step by step migration recommendation and FAQs. Additionaly, we are always supporting the migration, since ShortPoint design and branding capabilities on Modern Pages are far more extensive!



TABLE OF CONTENTS


Before we begin, we would like to highlight a few FAQs you might have:


Q: Which features will not be supported after migration?

A: There is a very nice article from Microsoft about it, please  Customizing "modern" team sites.



Q: We have been using SharePoint, and we have configured many sites and pages in classic, how can we switch to modern SharePoint experience?

A: Good news for you is, Modern Site collections do support creation of classic pages as well. So we recommend (if you can) start by creating Modern site collection and copy over your classic page as a first step and later as a second step convert your classic pages to modern pages. This would give you a phased approach.


Q: Is SharePoint Modern Experience stable?

A: Yes, SharePoint Modern experience has been released on August 2016 and since then including many releases from Microsoft, Modern SharePoint has been much stable now. 


Q: Can we create the same site template as we had in Classic SharePoint?

A: No, the complexities around site templates have been reduced a lot, and now you have only the following options to choose from:

  1. Team site - for team collaboration;

  2. Communication site - for news, reports, status, etc. sharing.


You have to decide how you want to migrate your existing Classic SharePoint site collection to a Modern Site collection. We recommend creating a modern communication site for your classic publishing site and team site for the rest.


Q: Can I switch back to Classic from Modern in case if our users find modern SharePoint experience difficult to use?

A: First, we do not recommend switching back from Modern to Classic. As explained earlier, it is not so easy to switch back to Classic from Modern (the process is not the same as switching from Modern to Classic). However, in Modern SharePoint you can still have everything classic, so a situation like this should never come up. 



Q: We have done a lot of design customization in our classic site (Master page modifications). How do we migrate it?

A: You cannot migrate your classic site designs (Master page) to modern site.


Step 1: Make a backup


In any case, your source site collection or site is going to be in place, so this is not a very critical step, but it is recommended to take backup of your content. Unfortunately, here also we do not have any direct method but here are few recommendations:


  1. There are many third party tools available to back up the site. If you have a large amount of data, and you have used Lists and Libraries heavily, we recommend using this option.

  2. You can manually back up files. For more information, check out Information about manual migration of SharePoint Online content.

  3. Create an Office 365 support request (yes, Microsoft can help you with that, but do it much early before your planned migration).


Step 2: Perform migration (restoration)

Again, here we do not have any direct way of restoration. We can perform it using any of the way below, which are pretty common as backup:


  1. There are many third party tools available to restore the site. If you have a large amount of data, and you have used Lists and Libraries heavily, we recommend using this option.

  2. Manual restoration > For more information, check out Information about manual migration of SharePoint Online content.

  3. Create an Office 365 support request (yes, Microsoft can help you with that, but do it much early before your planned migration).



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