SharePoint Designer 2013 End of Support: What to Do Next

Published: 1 July 2026. SharePoint Designer 2013 loses all Microsoft support on July 14, 2026. The application itself will not be forcibly uninstalled from machines immediately, but Microsoft will provide no further security patches, bug fixes, or technical assistance after that date. Administrators who still have SPD 2013 connected to SharePoint Online or running on-premises farms need to act before the deadline.

Source: Microsoft Lifecycle - Ending Support in 2026 | Message Center ID: MC1230891

What End of Support Means for SharePoint Online Admins

SharePoint Designer 2013 (SPD) was the primary authoring tool for SharePoint workflows, data connections, site customisations, and InfoPath-backed form pages for years. Two major retirement milestones now apply to it:

• SharePoint 2013 workflow runtime - retired April 2, 2026. The engine that runs SPD-authored 2013 workflows inside SharePoint Online was shut down on April 2, 2026. Any workflow still running in SharePoint Online using the 2013 engine stopped functioning at that point. This affected the runtime, not the SPD client tool itself.
• SharePoint Designer 2013 application - end of support July 14, 2026. This is the desktop client. Microsoft will not patch security vulnerabilities or provide support for the tool after this date. Microsoft has progressively restricted SPD connections to SharePoint Online over recent years and will no longer support any remaining connectivity.

For organisations still referencing SPD-built artefacts - legacy branding, older content types managed through SPD, or any remaining SPD-connected data sources - this deadline marks the point at which these configurations lose Microsoft support.

What to Audit Before July 14

The most pressing task is identifying what in your environment still depends on SharePoint Designer 2013. Run this audit across your tenant before the deadline:

• Workflow associations. Use the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMAT) or PowerShell to enumerate list and site workflows still associated with the 2013 engine. Any active association should have already stopped executing after April 2026; the goal now is to clean up and document what existed.
• Content types and site columns managed with SPD. If your organisation used SPD to push content type or column changes across site collections, review whether those structures are still maintained correctly through SharePoint Online's own content type hub or the modern admin experience.
• Custom master pages and page layouts. SPD was heavily used to deploy classic master pages and publishing page layouts. Classic publishing infrastructure is itself under a separate retirement notice; if you are still running classic publishing sites that were customised via SPD, plan the transition to modern pages.
• InfoPath forms tied to SPD workflows. InfoPath Forms Services retirement took effect in July 2026 as well. If your SPD workflows triggered InfoPath forms, both halves of that integration are now retired. Replacement options include Power Apps for forms and Power Automate for the workflow logic.

Migration Path: Power Automate and the SharePoint Migration Tool

Microsoft's recommended replacement for SPD workflows is Power Automate. The SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) version 4.1 can automatically convert a subset of common workflow actions to Power Automate flows. Not all actions have direct equivalents - complex approval and escalation workflows require rebuilding by hand.

Steps for the migration:

1. Download and run the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool to generate a workflow inventory for your tenant.
2. Prioritise workflows by business criticality. Workflows tied to active business processes take priority; archive and document workflows that are no longer actively running.
3. Use SPMT 4.1 to automatically migrate supported workflow actions to Power Automate flows.
4. Manually rebuild complex workflows in Power Automate, using Approvals, Teams notifications, and HTTP actions as replacements for SPD-specific actions.
5. Test each migrated flow thoroughly before decommissioning the SPD version.
6. Remove residual SPD workflow associations from SharePoint lists and libraries once migration is confirmed.

For more information on managing SharePoint Online content at scale during and after a migration, see how to migrate SharePoint sites between tenants or the comparison of SharePoint migration tools.

Source: SharePoint 2013 workflow retirement - Microsoft Support