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Restore or download: what a click does

Replace in place or Download a copy

When a file is archived, the file that stays behind in SharePoint is a placeholder. What happens when somebody clicks it is written inside the placeholder, and a run sets the same choice for every file it archives. This page is the difference between the two, and how to pick.

Reads only. Nothing in SharePoint is changed.
On this page What it tells you How it runs What you need What it will not do Read next

What it tells you

  • Download a copy hands back a COPY. The person gets the file on their computer, the archived copy stays in your storage, and SharePoint is not written to - so the space you reclaimed stays reclaimed.
  • Replace in place puts the file BACK. It returns to the library it came from, editable, with its name, its remaining version history, its permissions and its item identity intact, and the placeholder disappears. The space is used again for as long as it is back. Recycled versions must be recovered separately from SharePoint's recycle bin.
  • Both look like an ordinary file in the library: same name, same folder, a ShareMaster icon, and a click that just works. Nobody has to install anything.
  • One per run, on purpose. Leaving both beside every archived file doubles the number of things in a library and asks whoever finds them to choose between two files where they expected one.
  • Replace in place is the default, because a placeholder's job is to make archiving invisible: click it and the file is back, working as it did. Download a copy keeps the saving instead, for files nobody needs back in SharePoint.

How it runs

  1. Choose Download a copy for things that are read and not edited. Finished projects, signed contracts, completed matters, old photography, anything kept for reference or for a records policy. Somebody who needs one takes a copy; the library stays small.
  2. Choose Replace in place where work might resume. A dormant client folder that could reopen, a design set that gets revisited, last season's plans. A click puts the real file back where it was, and it behaves exactly as it did before - so nobody has to know it had been archived.
  3. Either way, the original is not deleted. Its contents move to your own Azure storage account. The placeholder is how they are reached, and it carries a pointer and never a credential.
  4. Changing it needs no re-registration. Both behaviours use the one registered .shurl file type, so a later run can choose differently without restarting Microsoft's 24 to 48 hour clock.

What you need

  • For .shurl: the file type registered by setup step 3 must have finished propagating - Microsoft allows 24 to 48 hours. Until then a click does nothing useful. A .url shortcut needs no registration.

What it will not do

  • Replace in place gives the space back. If most people restore most files, the saving erodes - which is the reason Download a copy exists.
  • A placeholder in a folder somebody syncs to their PC with OneDrive behaves differently, and that case is not covered yet.
  • Replace in place by a click keeps Created and Created By, but sets Modified and Modified By to the time of the click and the person who clicked. Restore Archived Files keeps all four.

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