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Chris_Clark1968's avatar
Chris_Clark1968
Iron Contributor
Jun 02, 2026

Moving Files from a Shared Drive to a SharePoint site

Hi, I've seen the moving of files from a Shared Drive to a SharePoint site can be tricky, depending on the size of the files that are to be moved. What is the best and most effective way to mov...
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Chris_Clark1968's avatar
Chris_Clark1968
Iron Contributor
Jun 03, 2026

Hi,

Thank you your prompt reply.

If moved by manually moving or by a migration tool will previous versions be available still.

The org have three Shared Drives (DeptShared, UserShared and Orgwide??
With folders and sub folders.

Regards

Chris

virendrak's avatar
virendrak
Steel Contributor
Jun 03, 2026

When files are moved from a LAN/file share to SharePoint Online (SPO), either by drag-and-drop, upload, or using a migration tool, the action is essentially a copy operation, not a true “move.”

  • The source files remain on the LAN unless they are manually deleted afterward.
  • SharePoint treats the uploaded files as new files, so no previous version history is carried over.


Since a file share (LAN) does not support versioning, there is no version history to migrate in the first place. Therefore, both manual upload and migration tools will only bring over the latest version of each file. Migration tools may preserve additional metadata (such as created/modified dates and permissions), but version history is not applicable in this case.

However, one important point to note:
If versioning is enabled in SharePoint and you upload or migrate a file with the same name to the same location where it already exists, SharePoint will treat it as a new version of the existing file. In this scenario, the file is added on top of the existing one, and version history will be maintained within SharePoint going forward.

Regarding your shared drives (DeptShared, UserShared, Orgwide), the folder and subfolder structure can be maintained during migration, regardless of the method used.

Please let me know if I have misunderstood your question or if you were referring to a different scenario.