Seamless tenant-to-tenant
OneDrive migrations

Yes - and this one trip people up more than almost anything else. ShareGate moves content into existing OneDrive accounts; it doesn't provision them. Before you migrate, destination OneDrives need to be created and fully provisioned - not just licensed but accessed at least once to complete Microsoft's provisioning step. The good news: you don't need every user to log in themselves. A simple admin script using a foreach connect-site loop can provision all accounts in one pass; we have it in our documentation. One timing note: provisioning can take up to 24 hours to fully propagate everywhere, so run this step well ahead of your migration window, not immediately before.

They don't come over. Sharing links are tied to a specific tenant's infrastructure, so they can't be transferred - ShareGate migrates your files, folders, versions, metadata, and permissions, but existing Anyone or external sharing links won't carry over to the destination. Most IT admins see this as a clean slate: users get their content in the new tenant and reshare from there under the new governance rules. If your organization relies heavily on internal and external sharing links, plan for a communication to affected users before cutover.

It's simpler than it sounds. When you remove a Microsoft 365 license from a user account, their OneDrive doesn't disappear immediately - it stays active and accessible, just like it had a license. That account becomes "unlicensed." Microsoft's policy change targets exactly these accounts: without a retention policy in place, they get permanently deleted after the deadline. With a retention policy, they get archived - but restoring from archive costs $0.60/GB. Either way, the data is at risk. The clock is running on any OneDrive tied to a user whose license was removed, whether they left the org last month or three years ago.

Absolutely. ShareGate uses Microsoft’s secure APIs and never stores your data. Everything moves directly between your environments, with full support for preserving permissions, encryption, and labels—so you stay compliant and confident.

It depends on which state the OneDrive is in - and this distinction matters. If the OneDrive is still active but unlicensed (within the 93-day window before archival), ShareGate can connect to it normally and migrate the content out. No special steps needed - an unlicensed account doesn't affect ShareGate's ability to access the OneDrive as long as it's still reachable through the SharePoint front end. If the OneDrive has been set to read-only (which Microsoft applies around day 60 of the unlicensed period), ShareGate can't migrate directly from it in that state. An admin needs to remove the read only lock via PowerShell first, then migrate. If the OneDrive has been archived to Microsoft 365 Archive (day 93+), ShareGate cannot access it. Archival moves the content out of its normal location into Azure storage and blocks all front-end access - there's no URL to connect to. To migrate from an archived OneDrive, an admin must first reactivate it, which triggers a one-time fee of $0.60/GB and requires Microsoft 365 Archive billing to be enabled. Once reactivated, the OneDrive becomes accessible again for up to 30 days before Microsoft archives it again automatically. That's your migration window. If the OneDrive has been permanently deleted (after 12 months of non payment or no retention policy), the data is gone and recovery isn't possible.

Really fast. Like “beat Microsoft’s 93-day clock” fast. ShareGate uses parallel processing and smart batching to move data at top speed—without cutting corners.

Yes! ShareGate keeps your file versions, metadata, and user permissions intact during the move, so your users land in familiar territory—no broken links or lost context.

Incremental migration does a follow-up pass before cutover to pick up changes since the initial run - without re-copying everything from scratch. ShareGate compares files by name, created date, and modified date to decide what to copy or skip. For large projects, use a PowerShell script to sequence your OneDrives one at a time rather than combining multiple drives into a single operation. If a drive is very large, split it into smaller tasks too. To maximize throughput, run scripts in parallel - but across separate machines, not the same one. Each machine handles one operation at a time; multiple machine activations let Microsoft treat each as a separate channel, reducing throttling. Split the workload across tasks and machines, never stack operations on a single machine.

Yes. ShareGate migrates OneNote notebooks by copying the notebook's folder structure. OneNote notebooks are stored as folders with .onetoc2 files, so you use Copy content only to migrate them like any other files in OneDrive.

Yes. ShareGate imports content from file shares into users' OneDrive for Business. You can do this through the interface or automate it at scale with the ShareGate PowerShell module available in the Pro and Enterprise packages.