SharePoint Online Migration Checklist: What I Learned & What You Should Know

Approved By Anuraag Singh

Published On June 9th, 2025

Reading Time 10 Minutes Reading

Migrating to SharePoint Online has become a necessity for modern organizations like yours and mine. I’ve helped organizations of all sizes migrate to SharePoint, and I know how frustrating it can be without the right SharePoint Online migration checklist. That’s exactly why I’m sharing these step-by-step SharePoint migration best practices and my personal experiences, to help you ensure an effortless and error-free transition.

Let’s get started with why proper planning matters.

Why You Need a SharePoint Migration Project Plan?

I can tell you from firsthand experience, without a clear plan, SharePoint Tenant to Tenant migration lead to downtime, missing data, and frustrated teams. But with a solid plan like the one I’m sharing here, you can:

Reduce disruptions and errors
Ensure accurate data transfer
Map data properly and maintain permissions
Complete migration within deadlines
Achieve 100% success

According to Microsoft’s official SharePoint adoption guide, proper planning reduces migration risks significantly.

SharePoint Online Migration Checklist – 6 Key Phases

After years of working with SharePoint migrations, I’ve developed this 6-phase SharePoint migration project plan. By following this checklist, any user can migrate SharePoint list to another site simultaneously. Below are the most significant phases for a successful SharePoint migration best practices, i.e.

1. Gather All Data
2. Data Cleaning
3. New SharePoint Environment Preparation
4. Inform Affected Users
Mistakes I Almost Made (So You Don’t Have To)
5. Choose Migration Tool
6. Post-Migration Checklist

Phase 1. Note Down the Data Points of Your SharePoint Environment

Apart from sites, SharePoint is host to many other data types. So, before a migration, a proper list must be made to avoid last-minute confusion. A SharePoint inventory consists of, but is not limited to, the following items.

SharePoint Farm Server Topology
All Web Applications
Sites and the Site Collections they belong to
Both Regular and Large lists (including email-enabled ones) and Libraries
Individual Pages (Login, profile, etc)
Custom Master Pages, Page Layouts, and Solutions
Workflows
Content Types
Site Columns
Permissions are applied at the user or group level.
User Alerts
Retention Policies
Records
Users and Groups used
External URL Dependent Files
Blocked File Types
Branding
Any other UI customizations (JavaScript, altered menus, etc.)
InfoPath Forms
Information Rights Management

Customization is at the very core of SharePoint, so it’s not surprising that many items on this list may not be in your scenario. Additionally, the opposite can be true, too, where some other data items might be within your environment that we have missed out on. In the end, IT administrators who are given the task of managing the migration must take special care so as not to miss out on any data items.

Phase 2. Tidy Up the Accumulated Data for Smooth Migration

One of the most prominent reasons to copy document library to another SharePoint Site or move the entire SharePoint site is when the source gets too cluttered to function appropriately. This diminishes productivity while bringing in a whole lot of issues like slower load times, malfunctioning sites, etc.

Therefore, it is the duty of the migration manager to ensure that these limitations stay at their source and don’t get passed on to the new environment. A simple way to limit this risk is to perform a clean-up operation on all the gathered data. That is why we feature this task as a separate section in this SharePoint Online migration checklist, and you should too.

Exclude Some Unnecessary Data

Invalid and Orphan Users
Dysfunctional SharePoint Groups, Lists, and Libraries
Ineffective versions that are present in the version history portal
Old and Unused Content, Sites, and Workflows
Junk files that are present in the recycle bin

Important Points While Cleaning Data

Make cleaning an individual responsibility. There are many cases where a person deletes a file belonging to someone else, not knowing that it has some critical data. If users are in charge of their stuff, this is less likely to occur.
Moreover, administrators can speed up the process by combining the sites into collections where similar redundant data can be scraped all at once instead of the time-consuming alternative.

Phase 3. Preparation for Your New SharePoint Environment

No amount of data cleaning is sufficient if we don’t have a place to put it. That is why the endpoint itself must be ready to receive a large amount of data. Moreover, during endpoint creation, there is a list of things to keep in mind. Don’t worry; you need not go anywhere else, as we provide them right here.

Essentials to Setup for a New SharePoint Environment

One of the most important phases of the SharePoint Online migration checklist is setting up the new cloud environment. Let’s see how.

Form the new environment’s architecture to match the source.
Build and set SharePoint hub site(s) settings likewise
Optimize the performance of new SharePoint Servers during installation
Set up all Web Apps one by one, and be sure to follow all authentication and authorization rules
Keep a backup SharePoint 365 or SharePoint Online
Test the restore mechanism
If needed, set SharePoint up to get user profiles from any specific sources
Map a plan for the metadata on your content
Update your metadata; bulk additions or edits to metadata
Optimize the mapping of templates, columns, or users
Examine your customizations and, if necessary, transform them to work in the new destination site.
Create a systematic watchlist according to these guidelines:
- Establish a hierarchy of various duties and responsibilities.
- Sort your organizational data according to a time (utility has an inbuilt setting for this).
- Change the settings for guest and external access (Pause this option temporarily)
- Map access rights and collect metadata of users and groups

Phase 4. Inform SharePoint Users of the New Environment

End users are the ones who bear the brunt of the errors or enjoy the benefits of successful changes. To make sure that the latter remains the case, administrators must put in extra effort to train the users. This re-education is compulsory for all organizations that have a migration on their horizon.

That’s why involving users early in the process is a critical part of any SharePoint Online migration checklist. So, users must be trained about the new environment. The changes and new features should be explained clearly to make sure everything is clear. Additionally, users should also be made aware of the timeline of the changes within the SharePoint environment.

Users who are part of the migration get to see the following:

Major and minor URL updates
Improvements to the SharePoint Sync Policy
Bookmarks Updates
Referenced Documents Location

We urge the administrators to pay close attention now because we are about to inform them about the most important SharePoint migration project plan item.

Mistakes I Almost Made (So You Don’t Have To)

Even with careful planning, I’ve learned a few lessons during the transition. Here are the top mistakes I almost made:

Forget to check storage space in SharePoint Online: I didn’t check the destination’s storage limits, and my migration paused halfway.
Overlooking External Access: I once forgot to enable external sharing, blocking partner access after migration. From that day, I always review external sharing settings before and after the migration.
Skipping Metadata Tests: Once, I assumed metadata like dates and authors would transfer. It didn’t, and I wasted enough time. So, always test a small batch first.
Notify Users About URL Changes: I forgot to notify my users that the SharePoint URL has changed. The result they couldn’t find their files.

To avoid these mistakes, I used a professional migration tool to handle the job properly. Let me show you how.

Phase 5. Choose the Microsoft Professional’s Suggested Migration Method

As industry veterans, we recognize the importance of the migration operation for users. As a result, we have come up with the MVP’s Advised SharePoint Migration Tool to add it to the SharePoint Online migration checklist. This tool is intelligently designed to adjust according to the scenario and fulfil all migration requirements.

Download Now Purchase Now

It redefines industry standards with its unique and simple UI with different filters to bring the best-in-class results. Download the tool from the link below and follow these quick steps to shift all SharePoint data.

Step 1. Launch the tool to pick Office 365 as both the Source & Target.

Select Office 365

Step 2. Go to the Workload area to select only Sites, then apply the Date Filter.

Select Sites and Apply Date Filter

Step 3. Conduct Validation for both Source and Target using admin-level credentials.

Validate Source and Target

Step 4. Map users via Fetch, Import, Download, and redo the same for SharePoint Sites.

Map Users and Sites

Step 5. Make Sections, apply Priority, Validate, and then initiate by hitting the Start Migration button.

Start SharePoint Tenant to Tenant Migration

Phase 6. Post SharePoint Online Migration Checklist for IT Admins

Follow the steps below for SharePoint migration testing.

Use the feedback mechanism of the utility for any error reporting and resolve it accordingly.
Pick a select few users who have relevant experience and assign them various Site domains for testing purposes.
Make sure that in the testing phase, no unnecessary changes are made. To do this keep the Site in read-only mode.
Testing should include both white box and black box scenarios for all workflows with their complementary storage areas.
In case the testing team finds missing data, this issue can be resolved via the Retry Failed feature of the utility itself.
For site-level errors, IT admins can apply the command “Repair-SPSite” and then check the service again.
Functionality-breaking issues that affect multiple sites might need remigration; this can be achieved via the re-run full migration function of the utility.
Once all tests are done and any major/ minor errors are resolved, it is safe to permanently take down the source SharePoint site.

Author’s Verdict!

Through this tutorial, I aim to give expert guidance on the SharePoint Online migration checklist. I hope that the explanation provided here was enough for the admins who have a migration project coming up. Finally, we would like to highlight the fact that most problems during migration arise from choosing an inferior method. To counter the upcoming challenges, you should go for the utility mentioned above and follow the explained SharePoint migration project plan for minimal disruptions.