Blog Post

Microsoft SharePoint Blog
3 MIN READ

SharePoint Alerts retirement

BertJansen's avatar
BertJansen
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 12, 2025

Microsoft strives to deliver utmost value to our customers through modern, optimized, secure solutions in this newly evolved world focused on digital transformation. As part of this evolution of Microsoft 365 solutions, we will be retiring SharePoint Alerts and believe Microsoft 365 customers will be better served by modern notification solutions based upon the Power Automate platform or SharePoint Rules. 

Timeline 

Date 

Action 

From July 2025 

The creation of new SharePoint Alerts will be gradually turned off for newly onboarding tenants. 

From October 2025 

The SharePoint Alert expiration feature will be gradually activated. Once activated, any SharePoint Alert will have a validity of 30 days starting from its first run, then it will expire. Users can self-service re-enable expired SharePoint Alerts and extend their expiration for another 30 days. Re-enabling and extending SharePoint Alerts can be done by using the “Manage my alerts” list/library menu item, opening the SharePoint Alert to update, extending its expiration date and clicking OK. 

From January 2026

The creation of new SharePoint Alerts will be gradually turned off for all tenants. 

From July 2026 

Microsoft will remove the ability to use SharePoint Alerts; existing SharePoint Alerts cannot be extended anymore and will not work anymore. 

 

Call to Action Guidance 

Update user training content and helpdesk 

It’s recommended to update your user training content and prepare your help desk to support your organization with this retirement. SharePoint Alerts users will be notified of this feature retirement via banners in both the relevant SharePoint Online page and Alert emails and users can self-service extend the alerts they deem required. 

 

The option to create new Alerts will be blocked (from July 2025, for new tenants, from September 2025, for existing tenants). Users trying to create a new Alert will not be able to save the Alert plus they’ll see a banner to make them aware of the SharePoint Alerts feature is retiring. 

 

As of October 2025, users will see an option to extend the expiration of their existing SharePoint Alerts plus they’ll see a banner to make them aware of the SharePoint Alerts feature is retiring. 

 

 

When a user receives a SharePoint Alert email as of October 2025, the email will also contain a banner clarifying the SharePoint Alert feature is retiring plus the email will show when the SharePoint Alert that triggered this email will expire. The date shown is a UTC date. Users can proactively extend their SharePoint Alerts, or in case a SharePoint Alert did expire re-enable and extend it. The maximum validity of a SharePoint Alert extension is 30 days. 

Microsoft 365 Assessment tool 

To understand if your organization is using SharePoint Alerts or begin planning migration to Power Automate or SharePoint Rules, we recommend that customers run the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool to scan their tenants for SharePoint Alerts usage. Using the Power BI Alerts Report generated by the scanner tool, you can see all the SharePoint Alerts defined in the tenant, filterable by site collection and web. 

Power Automate reference samples 

The recommendation is to user Power Automate with SharePoint Online for modern notification scenarios. To help you with the transition to Power Automate we’re actively building reference samples, we’ll update this chapter once these samples ship. 

How do I get help 

You can use the following services and partner programs to help with your migration from SharePoint Alerts: 

  • Help on Microsoft 365 Assessment tool: Open a support ticket 
Updated Aug 12, 2025
Version 3.0

54 Comments

  • tvisconti's avatar
    tvisconti
    Brass Contributor

    My top 2 concerns

    1) I am imagining that creating workflows that provide daily/weekly summaries via Power Automate will be complicated. Templates/samples that provide guidance would be very helpful. SP Rules do not provide a daily/weekly summary option. Power Automate samples that specifically provide daily and weekly summary options would be very helpful.
    2) SP Rules as developed are not a good replacement for SP Alerts

    Here are two different rules that I setup recently for different folders. There is no way to determine which rule is monitoring changes on which folder.

    If we edit the rule, we don't get much help either. It would be important to know what folders or files this rule applies to. It would be great if we could setup rules at the document library level. Right not it appears you can only setup a rule at the folder level.

    One other note. With SP Alerts it was easy to setup an alert that was triggered by the action "Anything changes". If we want to use rules to replicate this functionality it is going to take 3 separate rules as is.

     

    • Tina A Garavaglia's avatar
      Tina A Garavaglia
      Brass Contributor

      This was a good write-up and explains some of the pain points I am having. Rules are so generic and I need the ability to know when things change for a specific View where new items appears in that view or items are no longer assigned to that view. The PowerAutomate to do so is extremely complex. Also, it does not allow for the weekly summary because it needs to be triggered on "When an item is changed or modified." I have 30 flows that send weekly summaries based on the view changes. Not sure how to get around this now.

      • CarolinaMiC's avatar
        CarolinaMiC
        Copper Contributor

        I here you on this! As I was reading your message, a thought came to mind. Are any of those views based on the value in a particular column? If the view is filtered on only 1 column then could you create a rule that notifies you when an item with a certain value in a certain column is added? This could be an interesting test.

    • Dennis-Scherrer's avatar
      Dennis-Scherrer
      Brass Contributor

      I agree, creating a daily/weekly summary of new or changed documents in Power Automate looks easy, but it isn´t:

      There are plenty of https://bluesite.consulting/blog/Notify-new-QM-Documents-SharePoint.html#summary-changed-sharepoint-documents where people who don’t know how to code really need this.

      • pnthrzrule's avatar
        pnthrzrule
        Iron Contributor

        Almost nothing in power automate is easy. 

      • JimEA's avatar
        JimEA
        Brass Contributor

        Not good. We have users that need alerts an a specific document or view and this breaks the world for them. They are not going to have the skills to create PA flows and as everyone here is saying, dumping all of these flows into our pool of flows is not good. This is a typically bad rollout, removing something everyone uses and replacing it with something that does not answer the needs of the people using the replaced tool.

  • Does the change also affect Sharepoint Lists and are there any known deviations for Education customers who use Academic licenses?

    • BertJansen's avatar
      BertJansen
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Yes, this applies to both lists and libraries and no, there are no deviations for education customers.

  • BertJansen​

    Can you provide a gap analysis across SharePoint Rules and SharePoint Alerts, so your customers are aware of options, limitations, etc.? There are a lot of gaps between the two, so not something we can use as a like for like replacement.

    • Permissions (edit rights required)
    • No option to select multiple/all changes and daily/weekly summaries
    • Changes to items created by me
    • etc.

    Building flows (Power Automate) is not a viable option at all as general users aren't across building flows. Also, the flows will all end up in our default Power Platform environment with no governance, visibility, etc. and more than likely be running under the account of the person that created the flow, which is not great.

    For some context, I've just finished running a script across our tenant (will run the SharePoint Assessment tool to compare results) and can see SharePoint Alerts configured across more than 18,000 unique sites comprising of more than 20,000 unique users, so this is a major impact for us (and many of your other customers).

    Is there anything on the immediate roadmap to close the gap between SharePoint Rules and SharePoint Alerts? I know that there is a need to retire some of the older "classic" features, but there really needs to be a viable replacement, and ideally, a way to automate the migration process.

    Note that we're just unpacking the impact on our company with the retirement of Project for the web and the gaps in Planner, etc. There are also some key issues with Planner around the comment's functionality, etc. but that's another story.

    • BertJansen's avatar
      BertJansen
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      We're investigating the permission requirements and will provide Power Automate samples and guidance that will help with this transition. Regarding the default environment, this is a known issue that's being worked on. 

      • CarolinaMiC's avatar
        CarolinaMiC
        Copper Contributor

        I had chat with Copilot about all of this and this is what your Copilot suggests.

         

        As someone who creates educational content and tutorials for the SharePoint community, I want to respectfully raise a concern about the timing and support surrounding the retirement of SharePoint Alerts.

        The announcement was made without the availability of Power Automate templates, migration tools, or detailed guidance—resources that are essential for helping users transition smoothly. This has left many in the community, especially non-technical users, without a clear path forward.

        While I understand the strategic direction toward modern tools like Power Automate and SharePoint Rules, the transition has been made significantly more difficult by this lack of readiness.

        To support the broader community of users and educators, I respectfully urge Microsoft to:

        • Release Power Automate templates for common alert scenarios.
        • Provide a clear comparison of features between Alerts, Rules, and Flows.
        • Offer migration tools or scripts to help users and admins manage this change effectively.

        This change affects a wide range of users, from enterprise admins to everyday collaborators. Timely support and transparency from Microsoft would go a long way in ensuring a smooth and successful transition.

        Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

  • fowl2's avatar
    fowl2
    Brass Contributor

    Very disappointing.

    Neither Power Automate nor Rules are useful replacements for 99% of users.

  • TandyWine's avatar
    TandyWine
    Iron Contributor

    I'd like to have our users try the Rules as a replacement to Alerts.  But with alerts, users who have simply Contribute access can create an Alert.  But in order to use a rule, you need Edit access.  For most of our lists and libraries, we grant Contribute access, so the rules couldn't be used.  I'd like to see Rules be valid for users with just Contribute access.  Power Automate is more complex than what our users need to replace the Alert function. 

    • BertJansen's avatar
      BertJansen
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      We're investigating the permission requirements and will provide Power Automate samples and guidance that will help with this transition.

      • Rob_Webb_'s avatar
        Rob_Webb_
        Brass Contributor

        Can I ask when these PA samples and guidance are going to appear?

        Thanks

        p.s. I'm also extremely disappointed (not to mention incandescent with rage!) at the removal of Alerts with no sensible/comparable alternative.