Introducing the improved ShareGate Explorer – An all-new experience

Image of a sharegate document

We’ve been working really hard on this release for months, so we’re really happy to send it out to all of our users today. As an initiative towards improving your experience, for 5.23 the ShareGate team is so excited to bring you a complete overhaul of the Explorer.


Why Change?

Whether you are a software developer or end user, when you get used to seeing a feature look and work a certain way, it gets easy to become complacent. If it works, why change it? In fact, change might even seem a little scary.

When it comes to software designed for so many people, all with their unique roles and situations, you can’t be sure how well change will be received. But in the spirit of development, complacency just does not work. That’s why when it came to the Explorer, we knew we had to bring your experience to a new level.

Nothing is perfect, and ShareGate’s Explorer came at no exception. That’s why we worked hard to eliminate features that caused confusion, like the option to single-select or double-select items, and the hierarchical tree view. On screen, it looked amazing – but we knew we could make it easier to understand for administrators. Object types were difficult to pinpoint, multiple items in a hierarchy resulted in lots of scrolling, and it was too easy to lose track of which environment you were working in.

Fast Forward to the Present

In 5.23, we have a brand-new look to the Explorer that keeps all the things that you love but changes the things that you don’t. I’ll lay it out in bullet form.

What’s changed:

  • The Explorer is now in flat view instead of tree view so you can clearly see and understand what you are looking at.
  • You can now search names and URLs easily using the search bar found at the top of the page. >
  • Breadcrumbs at the top of the page assure a clear sense of where you are in the hierarchy.
  • Easy filtering means you can select which object types to display.  
  • Your current environment connection is displayed on top and a drop down lets you switch between connections.  
  • Quick access to actions for your parent-object are always accessible.
  • Drill down without losing your sense of place.

Search anything directly in the Explorer

What’s stayed the same

  • How you connect or disconnect to your environment.
  • All the actions on the Quick Actions Panel (such as edit, delete, duplicate, and so on).
  • The ability to quickly view item details like permissions, owners, metadata, and so on.

Actions in the Quick Actions panel

The new Explorer is in every way an improvement – not a replacement – on the old one. 5.23 molds the new look and features of the Explorer seamlessly with all the Sharegate classics that you already know – with zero compromise.

Now on to Migration…

On the Migration front, you can now migrate Communication Sites with Sharegate. One of SharePoint’s newer features, Communication Sites lets you share information with your colleagues or customers and look great doing it. No worrying about losing your beautiful formatting or having to re-do it from scratch, because you will find everything as you left it when your migration is finished running.

What’s Next?

In the coming month the team will be working hard on ShareGate. With this release, a huge change is coming. ShareGate will become a single unified tool. This means you can migrate to the cloud, and manage your content more proactively than ever before.

You will be hearing more about ShareGate 7.0 from the team as the day approaches, so keep an eye on those emails! Not subscribed? Please contact us and we’ll make sure you stay in the loop.  

Don’t Forget About Feedback!

We read everything you send us, so as you use the latest ShareGate version, don’t hesitate to use our in-app feedback button to let us know what you think!

Give feedback directly in Sharegate

What did you think of this article?

Recommended by our team

Your biggest Microsoft 365 jobs, made easy

15-day full-featured trial—no strings, no credit card.

Spot Icon

Smooth Google migration  Migrate from Google Drive to M365 the right way