A SharePoint tenant rename changes every site URL at the service level, but it does not touch a single character of embedded content. Every absolute URL in a site page, hyperlink column, document, customisation or web part still points to the old domain. Microsoft creates a redirect at each previous address, so those links keep working for now, but the redirects expire one year after the rename. That year is your deadline to find and replace them.
This guide covers what breaks, what does not, and how to replace the affected URLs across a tenant without editing each page by hand.
What Changes When You Rename a SharePoint Tenant
A tenant rename changes the domain portion of your SharePoint and OneDrive URLs, not email addresses. If your old name was contoso, the rename to contoso-corp changes the following:
| URL type | Old format | New format | Auto-updated? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SharePoint site collection URL | contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr | contoso-corp.sharepoint.com/sites/hr | Yes - by Microsoft |
| OneDrive for Business URL | contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/... | contoso-corp-my.sharepoint.com/personal/... | Yes - by Microsoft |
| Absolute hyperlink in a site page | https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/... | Still shows contoso; redirects for a year, then breaks | No |
| Hyperlink column value in a list | https://contoso.sharepoint.com/... | Still shows contoso; redirects for a year, then breaks | No |
| Quick Launch, hub or global navigation link | Configured per site | Absolute links are not changed; Microsoft says hub menu items keep working but are not updated | Partial - verify manually |
| Relative URL (/sites/hr/Shared Documents/...) | No domain in the URL | Continues to work | N/A - never broke |
The pattern is consistent: anything Microsoft controls at the service layer (site and OneDrive URLs, the redirects) updates automatically. Anything stored as text inside a page, list item, file or customisation does not. Microsoft's own instruction for that content is to search for the old domain name and edit it.
Where Broken URLs Hide After a Rename
Site page body content
Modern SharePoint site pages store their content in a page field that holds both the text and the configuration of each web part. Text web parts, quick links web parts, and image web parts can all contain absolute URLs pointing to files, pages, or sites. When a page editor pastes a link or picks a file for a web part, the stored value is usually an absolute URL, tenant domain included.
News posts are also site pages and have the same problem. A tenant with three years of intranet news where articles link to each other by absolute URL has hundreds or thousands of embedded references to update.
Hyperlink columns in lists and libraries
SharePoint's Hyperlink and Picture columns store URLs as plain values in each list item. If those values reference the old domain, they keep working only as long as the redirect does. They are not visible in the SharePoint admin center; you need a list-level content export or a tool that scans list item field values.
Document content
Word documents, PowerPoint files, and Excel workbooks stored in SharePoint libraries may contain hyperlinks to other SharePoint pages or documents. Replace Master's file pass covers some of this: it rewrites matches inside Excel workbooks, including links to other workbooks, inside Visio files, and in the body text of Word documents, as well as in .aspx, .html, .xml, .css and .txt files. Two gaps remain. A clickable hyperlink in a Word document keeps its target in a separate part of the file that the file pass does not edit, and PowerPoint files are not in its list. Scope how many documents are affected before deciding whether to fix those by hand or as they come up for revision.
How to Find All Affected URLs Across the Tenant
Before replacing anything, scope the problem. A report of every match for the old domain tells you how many pages and list items need updating, site by site.
- Export a site list. You need a list of every site collection in the tenant as a starting point. The Active sites page in the SharePoint admin center exports one to CSV, with storage and last activity columns. Use it to decide which sites to prioritise and which can wait (inactive sites can often be addressed after the main run).
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Report the old domain using Replace Master. Replace Master handles one site per run, covering whichever lists and libraries you tick there, and subsites need their own runs. Its report-only mode (the Replace Master Report in the Reports menu) writes a CSV listing each matching item with its current and replacement values, and changes nothing. Search for the old domain string, for example
contoso.sharepoint.com. - Review the match list before replacing. Some absolute URLs may be intentional references to external services, archived content or pages you do not control. Reviewing the list before replacement avoids overwriting those.
Running the URL Replacement in Bulk
Once you have confirmed what needs updating, Replace Master handles the replacement across the site pages, list columns, list settings and files you select in each site.
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Set the search string to your old domain. For example:
https://contoso.sharepoint.com. Do not include a trailing slash, as some stored URLs include it and some do not. The partial-match replacement handles both. -
Set the replacement string to your new domain. For example:
https://contoso-corp.sharepoint.com. Replace Master replaces the matched text in place while leaving the rest of the page or field value unchanged. Items it updates do get a fresh Modified date and editor, which can surface them in Recent views and trigger flows. - Work through the sites in order. Each run covers one site. For large tenants, process high-traffic sites first (the intranet home, HR and IT sites, project sites with active navigation) and confirm the replacements work correctly before processing the remaining long tail.
- Run on site pages first, then list columns. Site pages affect navigation and user-visible links; fixing those first reduces the visible impact. List hyperlink columns affect power users and specific business processes; those can follow once page navigation is confirmed clean.
- Verify a sample of pages after the run. Open five to ten site pages at random after the replacement completes and confirm the links within them point at the new domain. Searching SharePoint for the old domain is a useful later check, but Microsoft notes the search index can take days, or for large sites weeks to months, to reflect the new URLs.
For the full guide on what Replace Master can search and replace, see how to find and fix broken SharePoint URLs. For a broader comparison of URL replacement options including PowerShell alternatives, see SharePoint URL replacement tools compared.
What to Skip, and What Needs Other Tools
Knowing what to skip saves time, and a few things sit outside any content replacement:
- Relative URLs. Any link stored as
/sites/marketing/...rather thanhttps://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/marketing/...continues to resolve correctly after the rename. Relative URLs have no domain to update. - Hub sites. Microsoft lists sites registered as hub sites among the things that stop working; they need unregistering and registering again in the SharePoint admin center after the rename.
- Customisations, flows and reports. Absolute URLs in custom apps, SharePoint Framework solutions, Power Automate flows and Power BI connections are not updated by the rename, and Microsoft's limitations list covers each one.
- Microsoft Entra ID app registrations. If any custom apps or add-ins are registered with SharePoint URLs, update those registrations separately in the Entra admin center. That falls outside Replace Master's scope.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Microsoft automatically update embedded URLs when I rename my SharePoint tenant?
No. Microsoft renames the sites and OneDrive accounts and creates a redirect at each previous address, but it does not rewrite absolute URLs embedded in page content, hyperlink columns, documents, customisations or navigation. The redirects expire one year after the rename, which is when those links stop working.
Do relative URLs break after a tenant rename?
No. Relative URLs contain no tenant domain, so they continue to resolve correctly after the rename without any changes. Only absolute URLs that contain the old domain need to be updated.
How long does a tenant rename take?
Microsoft says the rename can take several hours to days depending on how many sites and OneDrive accounts you have, and each site is briefly inaccessible while it is renamed. Search catches up more slowly: Microsoft's benchmark is about three days for sites under 100,000 documents and weeks to months for larger ones. Wait until the rename status shows complete before running URL replacements.
Source: Change your SharePoint domain name, Microsoft Learn.