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john john's avatar
john john
Iron Contributor
Dec 07, 2018

PDF & sub-folders lost their createdBy & ModfiiedBY value when migrated from file share to SP online

we have windows server 2012, where we have around 70 GB of file shares. and i want to migrate those file shares to sharepoint online. so i followed these steps:-

1) I create a new modern communication site collection.

2) Then i used a 3rd party tool named ShareGate to migrate from file shares to sharepoint online document library.

3) Where i did a sample test, and i have noted that office files such as MS word documents were migrated correctly and there metadata (Create,Modified,Created-BY & Modified-By) values were migrated as well.

 

But all the PDF files, all the Folders, all the Sub-folders & couple of .xlsx files had their Created-By & Modified-By values set to the user who perform the migration, although the created and modified dates for these components were preserved well. and the users who modified and created these components are valid users inside sharepoint online.

 

now i contacted the company about this issue, but did not receive any reply till now. but i have these 2 questions:-

1. Can anyone advice why PDF & Folders are facing these issues? keeping in mind that the server i am doing the migration from have adobe reader & office installed on it, so i can read the files and their metadata from the shared drives without any issue.

2. Let say the 3rd party migration tool can not preserve the metadata for these components. then what are the other appraochies we can follow to do the migration and preserve all the metadata for all the file types and folders?

 

appreciate any help and ideas.

Thanks

admin
files
SharePoint Online

2 Replies

    • john john's avatar
      john john
      Iron Contributor
      Dec 08, 2018
      Thuyavan Ganesan wrote:

      Please have a look at this below forum . The user information must be preserved loaded during migration mapping to the destination. 

       

      https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/207428/sharepoint-migration-and-invalid-modified-by-created-by-users-update

       

      Thanks,

      Thuyavan

      Thuyavan Ganesancan you please advice more on your reply?  i did not get what do you mean by "The user information must be preserved loaded during migration mapping to the destination. "??

      now in my case i can see the PDFs' and sub-folders' Owner fields inside the file share. and i have noted this for all the PDFs and sub-folders, is that inside the File shares, they do not have any values for the "Authors" fields, but they only have values for a  field named "Owner",as follow:-

       

      now i am not sure if these facts are casing the problem i am facing, because i test the migration on another tenant, where the PDFs and sub-folders also have empty values for the "Authors" fields, but when i did the migration, the modified-by and created-by fields inside the sharepoint document library will be equal to the file share Owner's values without any issues...

      also inside the migration tool i can specify to map any unresolved user/s to an specific user/s inside office 365 (let say userA). and when i did so , all the PDFs and Sub-Folders got the specified user (userA) inside their modified-by and created-by fields.. so this can indicates that the issue is that the share-gate tool is not able to resolve the users inside the Owner's fields for the PDFs and sub-folders for a reason or another,, although those users are active users inside office 365..

       

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