Large migrations can result in migration reports with thousands of errors that you should be able to funnel to fewer repeating issues.
Here are a few key points to help you review your exported migration report and find the essential information you need to complete your migration project.
To learn how to export your migration report, see Export your migration report to a drive or SharePoint.
Index
- Add filters to your columns
- Filter warnings and errors
- Read the Details, Errors, and Warnings columns
- Understand repeating errors
Add filters to your columns
The first thing you should do is add filters to all of your columns in Excel with these steps:
- Select the entire header row by clicking the number [1] at the top left of your results.
- On your keyboard, type CTRL+SHIFT+L.
- Boxed arrows will appear next to each column's title. You can now click on these arrows to filter and sort your results.
Filter warnings and errors
You can review warnings and errors simultaneously on smaller reports, but we recommend reviewing them separately in more significant migration reports.
Filter warnings and errors with these steps:
- Click on the filtering arrow next to Status.
- In the dropdown, select Warning or Error with a checkbox.
- Error usually indicates that the item was not migrated due to a problem.
- Warning usually means that the item was migrated with some modifications due to limitations.
Read the Details, Errors, and Warnings columns
The Details column summarizes the information in the Errors and Warnings columns.
When available, the Errors and Warnings columns show you warning and error messages with a full stack of information.
To get all the information from these columns, follow these steps:
- Click on the arrow pointing down at the right of the Formula bar at the top of your spreadsheet to expand it, or type CTRL+SHIFT+U on your keyboard.
- Expanding the Formula bar will help you read the error stack and review multiple errors in a single cell.
- Select the cell in the Details column of the item to review for a summary of your errors and warnings.
- Select the cell in the Warnings or Errors column to review the full error stack.
- Look at the information in Excel's Formula bar. Since you expanded the bar at step (1), you can scroll down to get more information.
- If an error message does not help you understand or solve the problem, scroll to the right to find a link to an error article in the Help links column.
Understand repeating errors
Often, you will find that a migration report with many errors results from repeating errors.
Here are a few examples:
- You have many items created or modified by a user who is unavailable at the destination because they left the organization, causing a warning on all of them.
- An extensive list or library is missing a value removed from a column at the destination, causing all the items in that list or library to throw an error.
- The custom permissions threshold is exceeded in a list at the destination, causing an error on all the subsequent items migrated to that list.
In these cases, the solution for a successful migration can be as simple as creating a user mapping or adding a value to a destination column before relaunching the migration or an incremental migration.
It can also be more complex, like figuring out a new permissions structure for a more extensive list or library.
With a few filters, you can funnel your errors to a single user, list, or library and work your way up to figure out precisely what you need to do to complete the migration job.
If you see many similar errors in one of these elements, use filters on the Source site address, Source site name, and Source list title columns to better understand that element's migration.