How to move a Teams channel to another team

Every IT admin has been asked, “Can you move this Teams channel between teams?” Simple question. Complicated answer. Between the challenges of keeping chat history, files, and permissions intact, a small move can snowball into hours of tedious rework.

But it doesn’t have to. Here’s how you can move a Teams channel between teams, plus how ShareGate can take the stress (and human error) out of the process.

Why companies need to reorganize Teams channels

A business may need to migrate or duplicate Teams channels for lots of reasons. Here are a few of the most common:

• Team restructuring: Team structures are constantly in flux. New employees join and leave, departments or even entire companies merge, and cross-team projects muddy the waters even further. As organizational structures evolve, it makes sense to regroup channels to reflect that. For example, if the events and marketing teams started working together more closely, it'd be logical to move the marketing events sub-channel to the main events space to facilitate better collaboration.
• Reduce redundancy: Constantly creating channels for new projects inevitably leads to overlap. Consolidating several fragmented channels into more targeted ones reduces confusion, helping users more easily find the content they need.
• Lifecycle management: After a project closes, it might still be necessary to store relevant information in a dedicated channel. Rather than leaving this channel open and cluttering workspaces, archive it via the Microsoft Teams admin center.
• Improved security and compliance: Reorganizing a Teams channel can include redefining its permissions. If you need to control sensitive information, moving a channel to a more secure team can reduce risk and improve compliance. 

How to move a Teams channel to another team: What to consider

Manual migration works if you’ve got time, patience, and nerves of steel. But when you need to move channels between teams quickly and securely, automation is your best friend. Here’s how both methods work.

Manual migration

You can manually move Teams channels by following these steps:

1. Go to the Files tab in the source channel.

2. Select all related files and click Move or Copy, then choose the desired destination team and channel.

3. Manually recreate all tabs, applications, and settings in this new channel.

4. Export channel messages and copy them over to the new channel. Note that conversation history cannot be moved natively, so it may be easier to download it and create an archive file instead.

Remember: channels from one M365 environment can’t be manually moved to another with native tools. In situations like company mergers or acquisitions (M&As) where a whole new setup is required, manual migration’s privacy and permissions restrictions mean you’ll have to start from scratch.

Third-party migration

Manual migration can be a painful and time-consuming process. Thankfully, you can use a third-party system, like ShareGate’s migration tool, to automatically restructure Microsoft Teams channels. 

Third-party software facilitates the movement of channels between teams, as well as complete migrations from one M365 tenant to another. ShareGate’s migration system automates the entire process, reducing hours of repetitive work to just a few clicks.

All Teams data components are taken care of, including memberships, permissions, conversation history, files, and tabs.

5 challenges of moving Teams channels to another team 

Whether you’re moving a Teams channel within the same M365 tenant or to a new one, migration can be complex.

Here are some of the most common challenges: 

1. Data integrity

Migrating Teams channels to another team is about more than moving content; it’s about keeping that content intact. Beyond just conversations, Teams is used for sharing important files. Rushing the moving process can cause these files to get corrupted or to be copied over with incomplete data.

Even though SharePoint stores these files, when you move a channel, you still risk losing information such as version history, document ownership, and any content linked in tabs.

2. Permissions concerns

It’s important to keep track of permissions when you move a channel to make sure the right people still have access to conversations and content. If you don’t use a third-party solution, you’ll need to re-add members and channel owners manually. You’ll also need to check that guest users still have temporary access.

Permissions tracking is essential for security reasons. Some of the data being moved might be sensitive, and it’s easy to give access to the wrong person accidentally. You should always double-check private and shared channel settings to catch any permissions or configuration errors.

3. Chat history

Right now, Microsoft doesn’t offer any native way of migrating chat messages when moving channels between teams. Without a separate archived record, moving a channel risks losing these conversations entirely.

You can export and back up messages in a separate file for reference, but even then, there’s no simple way of manually importing these messages into the new channel. Without help from an automated third-party tool, it means essentially starting from scratch, with no active or previously saved conversations. 

4. Tenant mergers and complex migrations

Based on our survey, 80% of IT pros are currently in the middle of or are about to tackle an M&A-driven migration. That’s a lot of people managing intricate tenant-to-tenant channel moves. 

More complex migrations, including tenant-to-tenant migration, require much more preparation to make sure you don’t lose any data or metadata. And if you’re managing multiple Teams environments, things become even more confusing. Attempting to keep several channels intact can be maddening without third-party assistance to automate the process.

5. Human error

Manual channel migration is complex. So naturally, there’s a risk of human error. Even small mistakes can mean content is transferred in an incorrect format, sent to the wrong person, or lost entirely. For example, if you forget to double-check files that were linked in chat messages before deleting the conversation, there might be no way to access them post-migration.

Simplify your Teams migration with ShareGate

Migrating a Microsoft Teams channel requires careful planning and strategy. You’ll also need to be clear about why you’re looking to carry out the transfer. 

To make the complex process as simple as possible, it’s essential that you select the right migration approach—one that meets your permissions, content, and downtime needs. With ShareGate’s migration tool, companies can migrate entire channels between departments or from one M365 tenant to another with ease. 

Get started today by reviewing the ShareGate Microsoft Teams migration guide. 

FAQs

Need to facilitate a Teams migration? Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about how to move channels from one team to another.

How can you copy a Teams channel alongside messages?

It’s not possible to create a direct copy of a Teams channel with the same messages and files stored using Microsoft’s native tools. But you can export and save these messages. 

If you choose to carry out a manual migration, the best approach is to create a new channel and use the existing one as a template. Duplicate the formatting, tabs, and settings of the channel. Then, access previous messages and links from an archive file.

Third-party options, such as ShareGate's migration tool, move all essential Teams data components alongside channels, including conversation history and metadata such as sender information, links, and timestamps.

How do I share channels from one team to another?

You can share channels natively through M365. Start by selecting the channel you want to share, then click More Options, and then Share Channel.

From here, you can either share channels within your own team or with another. If sharing with another team, the Share Channel button allows you to send an invite to that team’s admin. 

Which third-party tools can help move Teams channels?

ShareGate Migrate is an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution for migrating Microsoft Teams workloads. Featuring integrations with M365, OneDrive, Exchange Online, Teams, Office, SharePoint, file shares, Box, and Google, ShareGate streamlines the entire migration process. 

More than 100,000 IT pros place their trust in ShareGate, and the platform is used to migrate over 5 petabytes of data every month.