Troubleshooting Loss Of Metadata And Version History When Moving Documents In Sharepoint

What Causes Metadata and Version Loss?

When moving or migrating documents in SharePoint, associations between files, metadata, and prior version histories can become broken. This leads to issues finding documents, loss of compliance and records management capacity, and knowledge workers lacking needed context around document origins and changes over time.

Most commonly, metadata and version loss occurs due to lack of planning and use of improper tools when undertaking a SharePoint migration project. Without careful analysis of existing metadata requirements and content dependencies prior to migration events, vital bindings between documents and metadata can fail to transfer to the target SharePoint environment.

How File Associations Get Broken During Migration

During SharePoint migration activities, documents get moved out of their originating location and into new destination libraries and folders. If the tools and procedures used for migration do not appropriately map and transfer existing metadata and version histories, this contextual information will fail to accompany the documents to their new locations.

Issues arise when source metadata does not map correctly to destination libraries, content types mismatch and lack appropriate metadata fields, or tools move or copy files in ways that strip the contextual information from the documents being migrated. Even manual migration efforts can lead to metadata and version history data becoming detached from files moved by admins lacking proper training.

Best Practices to Preserve Metadata and Versions

Follow this guidance to maximize retaining critical metadata and version histories when undergoing SharePoint migration efforts:

• Analyze current metadata usage and requirements via audits, user interviews, and examination of existing libraries
• Select migration tools that fully retain existing metadata fields and document version histories by default
• Properly configure metadata mapping settings in migration tools to ensure destination libraries receive needed metadata
• Validate retention of document metadata via sampling of source and destination libraries post-migration
• Leverage intact version histories in unaffected libraries to fill metadata gaps that arise after migration

Remediating Lost Metadata and Versions Post-Migration

Despite best efforts, some percentage of metadata and version history loss may still occur when moving tens of thousands or millions of documents to new SharePoint environments. Post-migration follow these steps to help fill gaps:

• Use audits and end-user complaint triage to fully identify areas of missing metadata issues
• Review events around the time of migration events to focus gap analysis
• Manually reapply missing metadata values where possible for high-impact content
• Attempt metadata value reconstruction from job logs, backups of source environments, and other contextual data sources
• Determine if it is feasible to re-run migration methods using appropriate tools and configuration to retain originally lost metadata

Example XML Configuration for Retaining All Metadata

When utilizing migration tools for SharePoint, metadata retention settings are typically dictated by XML or JSON configuration files. For example:


<MetadataTransferOptions>
<FileContainerMetadata>
<EnforceTransfer>true</EnforceTransfer>
<TransferAll>true</TransferAll>
</FileContainerMetadata>
<VersionHistories>
<EnforceTransfer>true</EnforceTransfer>
</VersionHistories>
</MetadataTransferOptions>


This sample configuration file contains settings that enforce transfer of all file container metadata fields stored in source SharePoint environments over to destination libraries, preserving attributes like Modified and Modified By. Additionally, full version histories associated with documents will also be moved to destination SharePoint sites.

Troubleshooting Specific “Missing Metadata” Errors

After SharePoint migration jobs have run, end-users and admins may encounter issues with missing metadata values on documents scattered across numerous libraries. Example troubleshooting steps for common categories of post-migration metadata issues:

Modified Date Missing on Documents

• Check migration tool settings and job logs to validate timestamp metadata transfers were enabled
• Confirm date formats map properly from source to destination SharePoint regional settings
• Use document IDs to find matching timestamp metadata values in source environment backups and reapply to affected files

Custom Multi-Value Column Data Lost

• Review multi-value data types and column configuration in source versus destination SharePoint libraries and content types
• Use parent site template and schema comparisons combined with migration tool settings to properly map source columns onto destination libraries
• Manually re-enter missing multi-value metadata in workaround scenario if unable to redo migration

Approval Status and Workflow History Absent

• Check for mismatched site workflows and incomplete workflow associations post-migration
• Access Workflow Task list backups to retrieve source environment workflow task metadata that may provide clues to missing approval data
• Engage migration vendor for root cause analysis if widespread issues traced to product defects or gaps