Records cannot be copied when the Site Collection Settings Declaration Role is set to 'Only policy actions'

Symptoms

When attempting to copy an item declared as a record, Sharegate displays one of the following error messages:

• Records cannot be copied when the Site Collection Settings Declaration Role is set to 'Only policy actions'.
• An error occurred while declaring the item as a record.

Or the following warning:

• Some limitations may apply while migrating records because you are not a site collection administrator at your destination.

Error code

Details

The warning happens when Sharegate identifies that the user is not a site collection administrator at the destination. This prevents Sharegate from detecting if the record and policy settings on the destination site collection will allow the migration to run properly. In this situation, you can either verify with your administrator if the settings are correct, or perform a test with a few records to see if they migrate correctly. For more information about limitations for users who are not site collection administrator, see Records limitations.

The errors can happen if the 'Declaration Roles' setting is set to 'Only policy actions'. This setting prevents Sharegate from declaring copied items as records, since Sharegate cannot act as a policy action.

Solution

Temporarily modify the site collection Record Declaration Settings to remove the declaration of records by policy actions:

1. Go in the destination site collection settings in SharePoint.
2. Click on 'Record Declaration Settings'.
3. Change the value of 'Declaration of records can be performed by:' to 'All list contributors and administrators'

This will allow Sharegate to declare copied items as records and prevent the errors.