Forum Discussion
Way to convert existing site to modern team site UI?
The new modern team site home page looks great and new team sites get to use it. How about existing sites? Is there a way for a site owner to convert their site (especially the home page) to the modern team site UI? One of my colleagues found a post to do it with PowerShell as a SharePoint admin, but it would be nice if the site collection owner could change it in a way similar to the setting for the document libraries modern experience.
There is a suggestion on UserVoice to provide the option to convert an existing site to a modern site.
It'll need more votes than the 2 it has now!!
I'm still waiting for out-of-the-box feature to create a modern site. Currently I've realized that the only root site collection (https://<your_tenant_name>.sharepoint.com) gets modern experience applied. The other site collections are still classical.
Not sure if this might help anyone on the "Get a site provisioned using the 'classic' sites method - SharePoint Admin Centre, Site Collections, New Private Site - but using the Office 365 Group team site (with modern UI home page) as the template", type angle ...
How to save the team site of an Office 365 Group (Unified Group) as a template, and create sites via the "classic" provisioning process from that template
Create a Unified Group with associated team site. This team site will be used as the source for the site template.
Navigate to team site, Site Settings (Site information, View all site settings), notice Save site as template is missing.
Notice that appending _layouts/savetmpl.aspx to the URL doesn't work, you get "Sorry, you don't have access to this page".
This is due to scripting being disabled in the Unified Group team site, which over-rides the SharePoint Admin Centre, Settings, Custom Script, configuration.
To enable the scripting for the site, per this article, …
… run the following PowerShell …
# Import general SPO module and connect
Import-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -DisableNameChecking
Connect-SPOService -Url https://yourname-admin.sharepoint.com/
Set-SPOsite "https://yourname.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite" -DenyAddAndCustomizePages 0
Return to the Unified Group team site, Site Settings, notice Save site as template is now available.
Click Save as a template and save the site as a template.
Go to Site Settings (Site information, View all site settings), Web Designer Galleries, Solutions.
Notice the site template you just saved, click the file, Save the .wsp file locally.
Go to SharePoint Admin Centre, site collections, New, Private Site Collection, and create a site collection using Custom, <Select template later… > .
Go to the home page of the new site collection, in the Template Selection choose Solution Gallery.
In the Solution Gallery click Upload Solution, browse locally and select the .wsp file you just downloaded.
Click Activate to activate the template solution.
Return to the home page of the new site collection, the Template Selection is displayed again.
Select Custom, then your template you just uploaded.
Use the default SP groups for the site's groups setup.
So this new site collection has the following properties: -
- The home page is a genuine Unified Group team site home page, because it is based on a template that was a Unified Group team site.
- The site collection appears in SharePoint Admin, Settings, site collections, because it was provisioned using the "classic" site collection provisioning process.
- None of the steps performed are "unsupported" by Microsoft. There was no "copy-and-paste" of the _layouts/savetmpl.aspx URL (as, for example, can be performed to save Publishing Sites as a template and thereby render them unsupported by Microsoft). Microsoft technical support confirmed this.
- The site is linked into the Unified Group that is associated with the source site of the template. Clicking on "Group Conversations" on the home page of the newly created site takes you into Outlook positioned on the Unified Group associated with the source of the template. So now instead of a 1-to-1 relationship between the Unified Group and the Site, it is 1-to-many.
- If you create sub-sites using the template, in either the source site or any site created from the template, these behave similarly i.e. all have the relevant properties 1, 3-4 above.
All References
http://www.contentprecedesdesign.net/2015/04/save-site-as-template-in-sharepoint-online.html
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/192050/save-site-as-template-in-sharepoint-online
Same issue here - site collection admin and Global Admin on our tenant but our root site collection homepage https://"tenant".sharepoint.com is still the classic homepage - any subsequent page created isnt using the Modern UI. In an ideal world I would want to convert it into a communication Site.
Any help would be great
- There is a solution for that, same comms site as template and use for root site collection, there's a blog out on the webs for it, seems to work fine.
Is it possible to change the look and feel of a normal (in our case - home)-page in the new UI? I found this url, but actually do not know how to start...
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/pnp_articles/modern-experience-customizations-customize-pages
When creating a new page I do not have the option to create a new UI page.
Found mine have automatically switched. If I click on the cog in top right then hit "Add a Page" new UI one is automatically brought up.
Have done that for the time being on some newer team sites, along with switching the experience for doccument libraries and lists.
Still would love the other bits and pieces that come with modern UI, I remember seeing a powershell script for it a while back that can change it at the site collection level but can't find it anywhere. If anyone has it please do post, would be much appreciated!
And how about the other way around? The 'new' Team sites get automatically created when you create a 'team' group in MS Teams (as ...sharepoint.com/sites/... ) - these already have document library, calendar, etc. Can I simply convert these into a "classic" SharePoint site (as ...sharepoint.com/SitePages/... )??
I'd also like to see that powershell script :P
But yeah, basically create a new modern page, add the webparts manually and save it as homepage.
Only difference I've noticed is that, currently unchangable, banner behind the page title. This banner does not existing in Office 365 Group Team Sites (page title is almost directly below the action bar [+NEW, ...]) where as in manually created modern pages, there is a large gap between the action bar and the page title.
Does anyone know a way around this?
- I just copied the default home.aspx from a new group-site to my old site. Seems to work fine to avoid the large top-banner for now.
Hey Eric
I tried to do the same. I copied the site page> Home.aspx from O365 Group and uploaded it on another Normal SPO Site. But its giving error of "No ComponentID"Did i miss anything?
I have the same issue, is there a solution yet?
- Chris McNulty
Microsoft
The quick way to do this: build a new page inside the Pages library, and then use the "..." content menu option "Make Homepage" to set the new page as the default home page for the team site.I'd love to be able to create modern site pages within a legacy publishing site collection, but don't yet have the option. Is this feature going to become available? I can create modern libraries ansd lists with no problem, but desperatley want to modernise the home pages of subsites etc.
Is there a setting within site features or page layout templates that needs to be manually changed?
Thanks in advance,
L
- Hi Luke, can you build a new page inside the Pages library, and then use the "..." content menu option "Make Homepage" to set the new page as the default home page for the team site?
I like the Communication Site layout and easy navigation style. Ideal for organization knowledge base sharing. Only that we have tonns of article in current Team Sites and practically impossible to migrate all pages / documents one-by-one.
I tried using Hero content part on Team Site but the layout is way different from actual Communication Site. E.g., it doesn;t fit the width of the page, search option is missing, navigation elements are incomplete. Hope there will be a way to migrate content from team sites one day.
Regards,
SM
- This is the method I have been using, however please be warned there are quite a few issues that I've discovered with Modern pages on none Microsoft Teams Sites, please see my post here for details: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/Warning-Modern-Pages-on-Existing-None-Microsoft-Teams-SharePoint/td-p/77594
Can you please share a link to that post?
- AFAIK such a conversion does not exist...what you can do in your existing team sites is just create modern team sites and use modern WebParts there...so in theory existing team sites are new team sites too...;-) the missing part here is how to link an existing team site to an Office 365 Group that it's something it will come (no ETA yet)
Of course... ;-)
