A project site is being retired. Nearly everything in it can go, except one folder of working papers that Priya, who ran the project, wants to keep. Or a business unit is being sold, and the people moving with it need their files from your team sites waiting in their OneDrive in the buyer's tenant on their first morning.
Both are SharePoint to OneDrive migrations, and the guides that rank for the phrase mostly describe one person dragging their own files around in a browser. This one is for the admin doing it on someone else's behalf: what the built-in commands can and cannot reach, what happens to permissions when team files land in a personal space, and how to do it across tenants. For the far more common opposite direction, see migrate OneDrive to SharePoint.
First, should these files be in a OneDrive at all?
A OneDrive is a SharePoint site collection with one owner. Whatever you put there follows that person's account. Delete the account and, under Microsoft's default retention, the OneDrive survives only 30 days before it goes to the recycle bin (Microsoft's OneDrive retention and deletion page has the full sequence). Team records copied into a OneDrive have quietly signed up for that timeline.
So the test is ownership. If one person is genuinely the new owner (their own working papers, a hand-over, someone moving to another company in a divestiture), a OneDrive is the right place. If several people will still need the files, a smaller team site or an archive library is the better landing spot, and our guide to moving files between SharePoint sites covers that.
What the built-in commands reach
From a SharePoint library, Move to and Copy to list the current library, other sites and your OneDrive. That last word is the catch for an admin. Putting files into another person's OneDrive means one of three things: they run the copy themselves, you become a site collection administrator of their OneDrive first, or you use a tool that can do that for you.
| Copy to | Move to | |
|---|---|---|
| Earlier versions | Not copied: newest version only | Microsoft's pages disagree; test one file first |
| Site left intact | Yes | No, files leave the site |
| Size per operation | 500 MB per browser copy; up to 100 GB or 30,000 files across sites | Up to 100 GB or 30,000 files across sites |
| Columns | Only columns the OneDrive library has | Only columns the OneDrive library has |
| Another tenant | No | No |
Sources: Microsoft's Copy to and Move to articles, and the SharePoint limits page for the cross-site caps. The column row matters more in this direction than the other. Team libraries often carry metadata (a client code, a status, a document type), while a OneDrive's Documents library has almost none, so those values simply do not arrive.
Microsoft's cross-tenant OneDrive migration does not help here either. It moves a whole OneDrive account from one tenant to a new OneDrive in another. It does not take content from SharePoint sites.
The permissions question nobody asks
Copying a library with its permissions into a OneDrive means everyone who had unique access to those files on the team site now has access to them inside one person's OneDrive. Sometimes that is right: the files are moving, the collaborators are not changing, and nobody should lose access on the day.
For a straight hand-over it is usually wrong. The point of giving Priya her working papers is that they are now hers. Leave permissions behind and the copies inherit the OneDrive's own, which means private to the owner until they choose to share.
Copying into anyone's OneDrive with ShareMaster
ShareMaster's clone copies through Microsoft's Migration API, and either side of it can be a OneDrive. The source site is left as it is.
- Open Migration Tools, choose the Structure and content clone and sign in. Source and destination may be one tenant or two.
- On the source side, pick the SharePoint site. On the destination side, switch from SharePoint to OneDrive. The destination tenant's users load; search the list for the person, or enter their address by hand. The resolved OneDrive URL appears in the status line as confirmation.
- Press Continue and choose OneDrive copy, the only scope offered. ShareMaster never runs a whole-site copy into a OneDrive, because that would overwrite the person's own site name, logo and settings.
- Tick the libraries, lists, folders or files to copy, and pick the folder in the OneDrive they should go into.
- Set the options for this run. Version history and Author + dates keep the history and the original Created By and Modified By. Untick Permissions for a private hand-over, as above. Pick whether a file already in the OneDrive is skipped, overwritten or saved under a new name.
- Going to another tenant, check the people mapping. Authors and permissions refer to people, so each source account is matched to its account in the destination tenant, and you can correct a match before the run.
- Run it. Before the content goes in, ShareMaster makes sure the account doing the import is a site collection administrator of that OneDrive, and if it had to add that right it removes it again when the run ends. Skipped and retried items are listed with reasons, and a deep or shallow compare checks source against destination afterwards.
Moving files inside one tenant rather than copying them? Move / Copy, ShareMaster's server-side tool, also accepts a OneDrive on either side.
Before you call it finished
- Read the skipped list. Paths are the usual failure: a OneDrive address includes the person's name, and SharePoint's 400-character limit applies to the whole decoded path.
- Check the OneDrive has room. The files and every version you copied count against that person's OneDrive storage.
- Tell the owner what arrived, where, and whether anyone else can see it.
- If the files were moved rather than copied, update links that pointed at the old site, or retire the site itself through the recycle bin so it can still be restored.
The full list of what the OneDrive copy does is on its feature page, and the route-by-route comparison is in OneDrive and SharePoint migration options compared.
Questions
Can I put files into another user's OneDrive without their sign-in?
Yes, with site collection administrator rights on their OneDrive. A SharePoint admin can grant those, and ShareMaster grants and removes them around the run itself.
Will SharePoint metadata columns come across?
With Copy to or Move to, only into columns the OneDrive library already has. Look at the destination library before you copy, and if the values matter, export them to a spreadsheet first.
Is there a Microsoft tool for SharePoint to OneDrive across tenants?
No. The cross-tenant OneDrive migration moves OneDrive accounts between tenants and does not read SharePoint sites.