adegette shared this post · Apr 28

Miroslav Burdych

5 folders deep. That's where I found the document someone "couldn't find" in SharePoint.

Projects → 2024 → Q3 → Client X → Final versions → report_v3_FINAL_final2.docx

Sound familiar?

Folders in SharePoint are like filing cabinets in a digital world. They feel safe, but they don't scale.

Here's how I help teams transition – without the panic:

📁 Phase 1 – KEEP folders
Migrate as-is. Don't touch the structure. Let people find their files where they expect them.

I've seen migrations fail because someone decided to "clean up" folders during migration.

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Ramji Chandrasekaran This 5-phase approach is brilliant, Miroslav! Phase 1 — KEEP folders and migrate as-is — is the most underrated advice in SharePoint migrations. I’ve seen the exact same failure you described: someone "cleaned up" folders during migration, users couldn’t find files Monday morning, and trust in SharePoint was instantly destroyed.

The phased transition from folders → metadata → views → tagging → natural folder fade is the right change management approach. And this philosophy applies perfectly to tenant-to-tenant migrations too — preserve first, optimize later.

That’s why we built Apps4.Pro — an all-in-one platform for Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration covering Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, Power BI, Viva Engage, Teams User Chat (full history), Teams Education, and Planner Premium — all interconnected in a single platform.

Trust first, change later. Perfectly said! Apr 5

Rupert Squires AI can often help address your legacy 5000 files with autofill columns for metadata. (At a cost) Apr 2 2 likes

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