Move your files to SharePoint and OneDrive: a guide for nonprofits

• SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT). Microsoft calls it a free and easy to use migration solution. It moves content from on-premises SharePoint Server sites and from file shares to SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams in Microsoft 365.
• Migration Manager, in the SharePoint admin center. It moves file shares, and Microsoft says it can also migrate content from other cloud providers including Google Workspace, Box, Dropbox and Egnyte. You install a lightweight agent on a computer or virtual machine, create tasks that name the source and the destination, then monitor progress and download reports.
• To use Migration Manager you need to be a Global admin or a OneDrive or SharePoint admin on the Microsoft 365 tenant, plus Windows credentials with read access to the file shares. The server holding the files must support SMB 2.0 or higher.

• Where each set of files lives now: server, laptop, USB drive, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive or somewhere else.
• Who owns each folder and who needs to see it, including volunteers, board members and outside partners.
• Roughly how much there is, and the biggest files.
• What is out of date and can be archived or deleted instead of moved.
• Anything with donor, client or employee details that needs extra care about who can open it.

Microsoft lists characters that are not allowed in file and folder names in OneDrive for work or school: double quotation marks, an asterisk, colon, less-than and greater-than signs, question mark, forward slash, backslash and vertical bar. Names also cannot start or end with a space. Files with those names can stop syncing, so rename them first.

Microsoft says individual files can be up to 250 GB. For OneDrive sync, Microsoft recommends no more than 300,000 items in total across your cloud storage, because performance problems can appear beyond that. Large archives are often better left out of the first move.

• Microsoft's tools can send content to a SharePoint site, a OneDrive account or a Teams site. A common pattern is team and program folders in SharePoint or Teams, and one person's working files in that person's OneDrive.
• Name sites and folders in plain words that a new volunteer would understand.
• Plan access by group rather than by person. Microsoft says the supported limit for unique permissions in a list or library is 50,000 items, but recommends no more than 5,000, and says to design large lists with as few unique permissions as possible.

• Move one small folder first and ask two people to open, edit and share it.
• Run the full move in batches rather than in one go, and keep the old location read-only until you have checked the new one.
• Download the migration reports and look for items that did not move. Migration Manager provides summary and task-level reports.
• Check that sharing works the way you intended, especially for folders with sensitive information.
• Show staff how to sync a library to their PC and how to open files from Teams.
• When everyone is happy, retire the old location and keep a backup copy for a while.

TRUE.org Cloud is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We can look over your folder list, tell you which Microsoft tool fits, and flag names, sizes and permissions that will cause trouble before you start. That help is free for registered nonprofits, charities and faith-based organizations in the United States and Canada, and this page has no prices on it.

If you choose to buy licenses through TRUE.org, they are provided by TRUE.org's for-profit Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, not by the nonprofit. You can always buy direct from Microsoft or from another partner instead.