More and more companies are transitioning to the cloud, with Gartner predicting that by 2026<\/a>, three-fourths of companies will use the cloud as their underlying platform. SharePoint users are no exception.<\/p>\n Transitioning from an on-premises SharePoint instance to SharePoint Online or Microsoft 365, however, isn\u2019t always the easiest task.<\/strong> To simplify it, I\u2019ve provided a few things to watch out for as you make the switch.<\/p>\n One of the great things about SharePoint is its use of relative URLs. This allows you to quickly and easily pick up and move a site or reorganize it in the existing site collection and not break all the links you may have created. Unfortunately, many users are unaware of how relative URLs work or even what they are.<\/p>\n Essentially, a relative URL knows where it lives relative to the overall site structure.<\/p>\n For example, https:\/\/www.acme.com\/sites\/engineering\/tools<\/strong> is a full URL that gets you to the \u201cTools\u201d site. The relative URL for this would be \/sites\/engineering\/tools<\/strong>. This removes the host header from the equation, and SharePoint knows you want to get to the \u201cTools\u201d site underneath whatever web application this may reside on. However, most users don’t realize that, and they may use the full URL when crafting their content. This becomes known as a hard-coded URL.<\/p>\n In an on-premises environment, if you were to migrate to a new SharePoint environment, you could create DNS entries to handle this. With SharePoint Online<\/a>, however, your new SharePoint URL will be a *.Sharepoint.com<\/strong> address.<\/p>\n Microsoft 365 does not allow you to use alternate access mappings and DNS to work around hard-coded URLs, so this could become a big sticking point when you\u2019re migrating hundreds of gigabytes of content to Microsoft 365, as all these hard-code links will break<\/strong>. Depending on your migration software, you can handle this process during migration, or you can purchase a third-party tool that can scan Microsoft 365<\/a> and replace those broken URLs with the correct ones.<\/p>\n When choosing to migrate to SharePoint Online, the first thing you might overlook is budgeting for a migration software package. Microsoft provides some free tooling in the form of the SharePoint Migration Tool<\/a> and Migration Manager<\/a> (formerly Mover), but as with most free options, there are many limitations compared to paid options. Multiple vendors provide migration software packages (such as Quest, AvePoint, Sharegate, and more), but since every SharePoint environment can have its own unique design and content, some of these tools may have issues with migrating.<\/p>\nHard-coded URLs in SharePoint<\/h2>\n
Migration Software \u2013 You\u2019re Going to Need It<\/h2>\n