Understanding what content gets migrated during a SharePoint migration helps you plan effectively and set proper expectations. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the Cloudiway SharePoint migration capabilities and limitations.
Overview
Cloudiway's SharePoint Online Sites Migration Product enables you to migrate site collections, subsites, document libraries, lists, and associated metadata between SharePoint environments. The migration preserves your site hierarchy and most content types while automatically creating target structures as needed.
Automatic Site Creation
Site collections and subsites are automatically created if they don't exist in the target environment. You only need to ensure the target site collection exists.
What Gets Migrated
Site Structure
- Site collections - Migrate to existing target collections
- Subsites - Full hierarchy preserved
- Site navigation - Quick launch bars and top navigation
- Welcome pages - With URL rewriting
- Site templates - Template selection maintained
- Composed looks - Site themes and branding
Document Libraries
- All documents and files - Including folder structure
- File metadata - Custom columns and properties
- Version history - Major and minor versions (configurable)
- Site attachments - Embedded files and images
- Content types - Custom content type definitions
- Taxonomy - Managed metadata and term sets
Delta Migration Support
Lists and List Types
The following SharePoint list types are supported:
| List Type | Supported | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Document Libraries | Yes | Full support with versioning |
| Discussion Boards | Yes | Threads and replies preserved |
| Announcements | Yes | Including expiration dates |
| Tasks | Yes | Task lists with assignments |
| Events/Calendar | Yes | Calendar events and recurring items |
| Custom Lists | Yes | With custom columns |
| Links | Yes | Link lists |
| Contacts | Yes | Contact information lists |
Web Parts
Web parts on pages are migrated with their content and configurations preserved:
- Content Editor Web Parts
- Script Editor Web Parts
- List View Web Parts
- Image Web Parts
- Media Web Parts
- Embedded content
Web Part Content
Permissions
- Site-level permissions - Site collection and subsite permissions
- SharePoint groups - Group memberships and permission levels
- Individual user permissions - Direct permission assignments
- Permission inheritance - Inheritance structure maintained
Supported Site Types
The following SharePoint site types can be migrated:
Team Sites
Standard collaboration sites
Wiki Sites
Enterprise wiki sites
Publishing Sites
Intranet publishing sites
Modern Sites
Contact Cloudiway
Project Sites
Project management sites
Document Centers
Document management
Modern Sites
What Is NOT Migrated
Due to SharePoint API limitations and platform constraints, the following items are not migrated:
Not Included in Migration
- Structural navigation - SharePoint APIs don't support structural navigation migration
- Custom master pages - Must be manually recreated or uploaded
- Library-level permissions - Only site and item-level permissions are migrated
- Theme inheritance flags - Theme and master page inheritance settings
- Folder color customizations - Document library folder colors don't persist
- Workflows - SharePoint Designer and Power Automate workflows
- InfoPath forms - Custom InfoPath form templates
- Custom solutions - Farm solutions and sandboxed solutions
- BCS connections - Business Connectivity Services external data
Pre-Migration Checklist
- Documenting any custom master pages or branding
- Exporting workflow definitions for recreation
- Identifying library-level permissions for manual application
- Running a pilot migration on a test site first