Forum Discussion
Sharepoint Landing Page is a Team Site, Company wants to switch to a Communication Site
When I go into Active sites as an Admin, I found the root site and selected "Replace Site". I copied the path to the site I wanted to replace it with. But I keep getting an error that says;
"The new site name is too long using URL https://----------.sharepoint.com/sites/archive-2023-09-08T111053Z. The path for all files and folders in the site cannot exceed 400 characters."
The problem is I'm not choosing that site name, sharepoint is attempting to change the current root site name to that after I try to replace it with the new one. How do I get Sharepoint to stop trying to change it to that name?
I'm guessing you have subsites or files within a long folder structure ? That's usually the culprite! Try moving them to a temporary site and then move them to the new site after the swap!
Avoid using subsites! Make the new home site a hub and those subsites to seperate teams or communication sites
SharePoint will change the name of it, it has to when doing the swap or else it would be conflicting. So it's going for that archived -date and time.
- There is one Subsite connected to the current root site, when I try to move it, I keep getting errors. It looks like their file paths are too long (greater than 200 characters). There are thousands of files and hundreds of folders to go through. Is there and easy way to manage or fix all the file paths to be able to move them?
- You need to copy or move them using the built in feature in SharePoint.
So create a new site with the same name as the subsite and move everything to where it should be located at. This will take a while for the system to move them.
karen_dredske
3. While Number 3 isn't required as it's strongly recommended that you have the root site as the Home-site, both ease of use, structure wise but for underlying features such as search etc.- NicolasKheirallah - I agree that the root site is always best being the home site. However. . . it turns out that for features like Search it doesn't matter anymore. It used to automatically turn on Microsoft Search by making the root site a modern site instead of classic. Not anymore. Now, if you have a classic site you get SharePoint search (old search) and if you have a modern site you get Microsoft Search.
My big concern with your suggestion was that this user was about to try to swap their homesite without having migrated the content out of their classic site. You didn't let them know that if they do that their classic site would become an archive site and no one but the SPO Admin would have access to it. It is critical that people know they need to move that content into a new modern site before doing this so that users don't lose access. You can't reverse that process. That could have caused a major problem for their entire organization depending on what is in that site and subsites and how they use it.
- It sounds like your root site is a classic SharePoint site. There are a couple of important facts you need to know before you do this site swap.
1. The classic site will be archived if you swap it out. This means that all the content will no longer be accessible to anyone except the SharePoint Administrator.
2. Unless you are a PowerShell guru, you're going to have to manage that subsite and file structure manually to clean it up. Even if you do know PowerShell enough to write a script, what you will have to do is to evaluate everything in that site anyway. Best thing to do. . . come up with a plan to migrate that content to a modern site before you even consider doing a site swap.
3. You don't need to do a site swap to make your new communication site your home site. Just go to the SharePoint Admin Center > Settings page and select Home sites > You can then enter the URL of the communications site that you would like to be the home site for your intranet.
IMPORTANT: Any users of that current root site are going to need to bookmark the direct URL to the root site to find it and the site below it. This classic site will be invisible as the homepage will redirect users to the new home site you are designating.
