Upgrade 'Team site (classic)' to modern experience

Copper Contributor

I have a S/P Online site which is using the Team site (classic experience) Template.

 

I am a site/site collection admin.

 

  • What is the best/easiest way to convert this site to a fully modern experience, ideally a 'Communications' site template?

 

I thought you could use the site collection upgrade facility, but I'm not sure how this works.

 

When I click the 'REVIEW SITE COLLECTION UPGRADE STATUS' link from the 'upgrade' option, the status is 'Upgrade Completed Successfully' with no errors or warnings. I'm not aware of carrying this out myself.  Clicking "Let's see the new site" still shows the site with classic features.

 

For instance, the site's global navigation menu is on the left, vertically (rather than along the top) for all pages.

 

My understanding is you can carry out 'site modernisation' from either the site settings or the Admin console, but PowerShell scripts may be required.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thank you!


(for reference, attached are the site settings I presently see - again indicative of a 'classic' site)

5 Replies
Hi!
Unfortunately, you cannot change the template of an existing site to another ne, this is something not supported in SharePoint Online. What you can do is just modernize the site:
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/transform/modernize-classic-sites
- https://global-sharepoint.com/powershell/in-2-steps-convert-a-classic-sharepoint-page-to-modern-usin...

@DogAndPonyShow you can't convert an existing teams site to a Communications site, but you can still convert it to the modern experience although it is best to do this when the site has just been created. What I do is to rename the current homepage to home-original. Then create a new page called home and set it as the homepage. That will automatically make it in the modern experience. Then any new page from then on will automatically be a modern page.

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

Thank you for your replies @Juan Carlos González Martín // @RobElliott 

 

@RobElliott- if I make a new homepage, I still get the global navigation menu vertically on the left.

 

Perhaps I've missed something.  I'd expect the navigation menu to be site-wide - on the left for classic sites or along the top for modern.  All the doc. libraries for this site are modern, despite having the 'Default experience for the site' set in the library's Advanced settings.

@DogAndPonyShow in Site Settings make sure you've turned off Enable Quick Launch.

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

@RobElliott 

 

Right!  Thanks for that.  That's hidden the nav menu on the left.


Presumably the only way to get the global nav. menu at the top would be to either modernise the site, or recreate it as a Communications site & copy/move all the content to the new one?