How to archive a SharePoint library without breaking links

What breaks, and what doesn't

• Sharing links and bookmarks to files in the library stop working once the files are gone.
• Links by path inside other documents, such as a spreadsheet that pulls from another workbook or a layout that places linked images, lose their target.
• Synced copies on people's computers follow the library, so files removed from SharePoint disappear from the synced folder too.
• What survives is everything you take with you: the files, their names, the folder structure, and a record of where each one came from.

Before you move anything

1. Choose finished work. Folders nobody has changed in years, jobs marked closed. If people still open something every week, it is not finished.
2. Check what still gets opened. The audit log in Microsoft Purview records who opened which files.
3. Check for retention policies. If one covers the site, deleted files sit in the Preservation Hold library until the policy lets them go, and the space does not come back.
4. Ask people to stop syncing the library before the move, so files do not vanish from their computers unannounced.
5. Keep the shape. Whole folders, same names, same paths.
6. Verify before you remove. Compare every file with the original by checksum and keep the report.
7. Leave a signpost. A short note where each folder was, saying where it went.
8. Keep a way back. A folder should go back to exactly where it came from, in one step.

Moving inside SharePoint instead

Moving a library to another site does not free storage, because both sites draw on the same pool, and it changes every file's address. If you do move within SharePoint, use Move to rather than Copy to: Move to takes the version history with it, Copy to keeps only the latest version, and managed metadata is not retained either way.

How Shed handles it

Shed Sweep copies the folder to your shed with its paths and names, checks every file against the original by hash, and waits for an owner to approve before anything is removed. After a cooling-off period you set, the originals are removed and a note is left where the folder was. Put back returns a folder to the same place with the same name and removes the note.

Put back restores the files and their place, not old sharing links. SharePoint treats returned files as new, so share them again if someone outside needs them.

Questions

Sources

• Microsoft: Move or copy files in SharePoint (version history, metadata)
• Microsoft: retention for SharePoint and OneDrive (Preservation Hold library)
• Microsoft: SharePoint limits