Overview of the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT)

Article
03/13/2024

The SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) is a free and easy to use migration solution to help you migrate content from on-premises SharePoint sites to Microsoft 365.

Migrate your SharePoint Server sites and content to take advantage of the latest collaboration, intelligence, and security solutions in Microsoft 365. The modern experience features in Microsoft SharePoint are designed to be compelling, flexible, and performant.

SPMT supports migration to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams from:

SharePoint Server 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019
SharePoint Foundation 2010 and 2013

SPMT also supports the migration of workflows from:

SharePoint Server 2010 out-of-the-box workflows (OOTB)
SharePoint Designer 2010 & 2013 workflows

For a complete description of features, see What does SPMT support?.

All SPMT functionality is also supported in PowerShell, if you prefer to use that method. See Migrate to SharePoint using PowerShell.

Supported authentication methods

SPMT supports NTLM, Kerberos, Forms, ADFS, multifactor authentication, SAML-based claims, and Client certificate authentication.

Important

If the on-premises server is configured to support multiple authentication providers, including Windows authentication, then Windows authentication will not be supported. If this describes your environment, use other authentication methods instead of Windows authentication.

Planning and assessment

Planning is the key to successful data migration. The SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT) is a simple command-line tool that scans your SharePoint Server 2013 farm to help identify potential issues with the data that you plan to migrate to SharePoint in Microsoft 365. The results report points to articles to help fix any issues that are discovered. The tool runs in the background and doesn't affect your production environment.

To download the tool, go to SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT)

Note

The SharePoint Migration Tool isn't available for users of Office 365 operated by 21Vianet in China.

Get started

To get started:

Make sure that you have:

Access to the destination: You must either be a OneDrive/SharePoint admin or SharePoint site admin.
Access to the source: SharePoint credentials that have read access to the SharePoint Server content you plan to migrate.
Prerequisites installed: Make sure you have the necessary prerequisites installed.