S2Stools
Can you move a SharePoint site to another tenant without a third-party tool?
S2Stools · 12 November 2026
Yes, in some cases. Microsoft has its own Cross-tenant SharePoint migration feature, run by SharePoint admins from SharePoint Online PowerShell, and it moves a site from one Microsoft 365 tenant to another without the content leaving the Microsoft 365 cloud. But it comes with conditions that rule many projects out: it needs Cross-Tenant Shared Data Migration licences that are sold only to Enterprise Agreement customers, it is a one-time move with no delta passes, the target site must not exist yet, and every user and group has to be created on the target first.
This article comes from the team that makes S2Stools, a SharePoint migration tool. Everything said here about Microsoft's feature is taken from Microsoft Learn, linked under Sources at the end.
What Microsoft's cross-tenant migration does
Microsoft Learn describes Cross-tenant SharePoint migration as a way for SharePoint admins to transition sites into a new tenant using SharePoint Online PowerShell. Admins establish a trust between the source and target tenants, pre-create users and groups on the target, upload an identity mapping file, and then start the move from the source tenant.
The page is explicit about what kind of move it is: cross-tenant moves are a one and done migration activity. The content is moved from source to target, a redirect link is left behind on the source, and incremental and delta migration passes can't be performed. When a site is finished, existing sharing links to the migrated files redirect to the new location.
Sites that can be moved include Microsoft 365 group-connected sites (including those behind Microsoft Teams), modern sites without a group, classic sites and communication sites. Teams content, channels and structure are not included: for a Teams-connected site only the SharePoint content moves. SharePoint 2010 and 2013 workflows must be re-created and republished on the target, apps republished, and Power Apps and Power Automate tasks re-created and reconnected.
Admins can schedule up to 4,000 migrations at a time, and a move can be given a preferred start and end time in UTC.
Licensing: who can use it
The feature needs Cross-Tenant Shared Data Migration licences. According to Microsoft Learn, the feature and the licences are currently available only to Enterprise Agreement customers, the licences are offered per 100 GB of data moved, and the way to start is to contact your Microsoft account team. To size the purchase, the page suggests summing the storage used by every site you plan to move, and notes a 20 percent grace on storage in case sites grow.
There is also a status question to weigh. Microsoft's page on bulk site migrations carries a note that Cross-Tenant SharePoint migration is currently in a private preview stage, that information and availability are subject to change, and that support for private-preview customers is handled by email. The FAQ adds that government environments (GCC and GCC High) are not supported at present.
If you were hoping to hand the job to Microsoft instead, FastTrack offers a cross-tenant migration service for Exchange Online, SharePoint and OneDrive. Its Learn page says the service is offered on an invitation-only basis, requires a minimum purchase of 150 licences and a Cross-Tenant User Data Migration SKU, and is designed for data migration only, without architecture planning or post-migration orchestration.
The conditions that decide whether it fits your project
Before the licence conversation, check your sites against the rules Microsoft Learn sets out. Any one of them can rule a site out.
| Condition | What Microsoft Learn says |
|---|---|
| Target site | Must not exist before the migration starts. You can't overwrite or merge an existing site. |
| Source site state | Must be read/write. A read-only source site makes the migration fail. |
| Size per site | No more than 5 TB of storage or 1 million items. File versions, folders and list entries all count as items. |
| Users and groups | All users and groups in scope must be pre-created on the target tenant, with licences assigned on the source or the target. |
| Identity mapping | One CSV maps every source user and group to its target, one to one, uploaded on the target tenant. |
| Encryption | Not possible if the source tenant has Service encryption with Microsoft Purview Customer Key enabled. |
| Path length | The full path on the target can't exceed 400 characters. |
| Sensitivity labels | Sites with labels that use user-defined permissions can't be migrated until those labels are removed from the files. |
Two of these are easy to underestimate. The 1 million item limit counts file versions, so a library with long version histories reaches it sooner than its file count suggests. And because the move is one-time with no delta pass, the source site needs a quiet window: Microsoft's own guidance is to tell users to close their files and make no edits during their migration window.
How the move is run
Microsoft Learn splits the process into seven steps: connect to both tenants, establish trust, verify the trust, pre-create users and groups, prepare identity mapping, start the migration, and post-migration steps. The identity map is a six-column CSV with no header row, covering users, groups and Microsoft 365 groups. It is uploaded on the target tenant with Add-SPOTenantIdentityMap, and each new upload replaces the previous map entirely, so every revision must still list everyone in the migration.
Once the compatibility check on the source tenant reports Compatible or Warning, a SharePoint Admin or Global Admin of the source tenant starts the move:
Get-SPOCrossTenantCompatibilityStatus -PartnerCrossTenantHostURL <target host> Start-SPOCrossTenantSiteContentMove -SourceSiteUrl <source site URL> ` -TargetSiteUrl <target site URL> -TargetCrossTenantHostUrl <target host>
Group-connected sites use Start-SPOCrossTenantGroupContentMove with the source and target group aliases instead, and the target site URL must align with the alias of the group pre-created on the target. A scheduled move can be cancelled with Stop-SPOCrossTenantSiteContentMove as long as it is not already in progress or finished.
On permissions, the FAQ is clear about where the dependency lies: people keep access to the content on the target only if they were included in the identity map and mapped accordingly.
When Microsoft's feature is ruled out
Going by Microsoft's own conditions, its cross-tenant feature suits an organisation that has an Enterprise Agreement, is moving whole sites outright, can create every user and group on the target ahead of time, and is comfortable with a feature its bulk-migration page describes as a private preview. It is ruled out, and you need another route, when any of these is true:
- You are not an Enterprise Agreement customer, so the licences are not on offer to you.
- The target site already exists and the content has to go into it, since Microsoft's feature won't overwrite or merge.
- A site is over 5 TB or 1 million items including versions.
- The source tenant uses Customer Key.
- You want to see what a move involves, and who on the target each person maps to, before any licence is bought.
What S2Stools does about it
Site Migrate, our product, copies a SharePoint site to a target site: files, lists and pages arrive with their authors and timestamps, and each run ends with a report that checks what landed against the source. Between tenants, each person is matched to a target user by a map row, an ordered domain rule such as @contoso.com to @fabrikam.com (user accounts only), or a fallback account you choose for content, and anyone left without a match is reported. A grant whose principal has no match on the target is skipped and named in the report. File version chains are replayed oldest to newest; list items and pages arrive at their current version. Start with a free dry run: it walks the whole site, lists the people and terms the run will hand the target and whether each one exists there, and writes nothing. Moves across tenants come with assisted setup rather than self-service, so contact us for those. The app asks for Sites.FullControl.All and shows as an unverified publisher; Getting started explains both and walks you to your first dry run.
Sources
- Cross-tenant SharePoint migration (Microsoft Learn)
- Cross-tenant SharePoint migration FAQs (Microsoft Learn)
- Performing Bulk SharePoint Site Migrations (preview) (Microsoft Learn)
- Step 5: SharePoint Identity mapping (Microsoft Learn)
- Step 6: Start a SharePoint site cross-tenant migration (Microsoft Learn)
- Cross-Tenant Migration (FastTrack) (Microsoft Learn)