Move Every User's Home Drive to OneDrive Using Microsoft's Free Migration Tool

Pushing legacy file shares to the cloud usually means moving two things: shared data into SharePoint, and each person's home drive into their own OneDrive. This guide covers the second one end to end. You will provision the destination, pre-create every user's OneDrive site, grant the impersonation rights the migration depends on, and run Microsoft's free SharePoint Migration Tool, either one user at a time or as a CSV-driven batch.

Set up the destination tenant#

Before you can move anything, the target Office 365 environment needs to exist with licensed users.

• Provision a net new tenant in Office 365. It will be provisioned with the .onmicrosoft domain. You can purchase directly or under the CSP model through a distributor.
• Add and verify the domain. In the 365 Admin Center, go to Setup > Domains > Add Domains. Add the domain and verify it with a TXT record.
• Add users and apply licenses. Add them one at a time, bulk upload via PowerShell, bulk upload via CSV, or sync with AD Connect (opens in new tab). Make sure each user has a license that includes OneDrive.

To bulk import users with passwords via PowerShell:

Import-Csv -Path 'FilePath' | foreach {New-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $_.UserPrincipalName -FirstName $_.FirstName -LastName $_.LastName -DisplayName $_.DisplayName -Password $_.Password -ForceChangePassword $False}

Pre-provision OneDrive for every user#

Each user needs a personal OneDrive site to receive their data. By default, that site is created the first time the user signs in. In a new deployment where users have not signed in yet, you have to run scripts to pre-provision the sites.

Confirm whether a site already exists#

Sign in to the tenant with global admin credentials and open the SharePoint Admin Center.

Take note of the admin URL at the top of the page, then click User Profiles on the left. If you do not see this page, click Return to classic SharePoint center in the bottom left.

Select Manage User Profiles.

Search for a user, click the dropdown, and select Manage Site Collection Owners.

If the user has signed in, they already have a personal site and the following appears. Note that later in setup you will add a user for impersonation rights in the Site Collection Administrators section.

If they have not signed in, you will most likely see the following instead.

Create the sites with PowerShell#

Next, run PowerShell to create the personal sites. If you are pre-provisioning OneDrive for many users, create a list of them and save it as a file, for example a text file named Users.txt containing user1@contoso.com, user2@contoso.com, user3@contoso.com. Download the SharePoint Online Management Shell (opens in new tab).

Run it as Admin and connect to the tenant. The URL is the admin URL you noted earlier:

$adminUPN="<the full email address of a SharePoint administrator account, example: jdoe@contosotoycompany.onmicrosoft.com>"
$userCredential = Get-Credential -UserName $adminUPN -Message "Type the password."
Connect-SPOService -Url https://Orgname-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential $userCredential

Run Request-SPOPersonalSite. If you only have a few users, run them one at a time. For many users, feed in the text file you created earlier.

When the commands finish, gather the list of all OneDrive URLs. Run the following and enter your admin URL again:

$TenantUrl = Read-Host "Enter the SharePoint Online Tenant Admin Url"
$LogFile = [Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop") + "\OneDriveSites.log"
Connect-SPOService -Url $TenantUrl
Get-SPOSite -IncludePersonalSite $true -Limit all -Filter "Url -like '-my.sharepoint.com/personal/" | select Url | Out-File $LogFile -Force
Write-Host "Done! File saved as $($LogFile)."

Add impersonation rights to all sites#

The SharePoint Migration Tool asks for an admin user to impersonate all destination URLs when you configure the migration job. You either run a script to grant this or do it manually if you do not have many users.

Manually#

Go back to the steps from the previous section and add your admin user under the Site Administrators section in the SharePoint Admin Center. The path again is User Profiles > Manage User Profiles > Manage Site Collection Owners. Do this for every user.

Scripted#

Download the AdminRights.ps1 (opens in new tab) script and modify it. The first two values are your global admin creds, $spAdminUrl is your admin URL from the first section, and $spMyURL is found on the SharePoint Admin Center site collection page:

Run SharePoint Online PowerShell as admin and run Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted, saying yes to the prompts. Then paste your modified .ps1 script and run it. It adds the necessary permissions to all users.

Build a CSV to import (optional)#

This section is only necessary if you have many users and do not want to enter each one individually.

• Create a CSV with two columns: Source and Target Web.
• Paste the file paths of your home drive users in the Source column, and the OneDrive URLs you gathered earlier in the Target Web column.

Download and configure the SharePoint Migration Tool#

Download the tool on the server where the home drives are located. Here is the link for the tool (opens in new tab). Agree and install.

After installing, sign in with the global admin credentials you gave impersonation rights to in the previous section.

Click Start your first migration.

If you are migrating only a few users and did not create a CSV, select File Share. If you created a CSV, select that option.

If you chose File Share#

Choose the file path of your user, then fill in their SharePoint URL.

If you chose CSV#

Upload your CSV here.

Review, configure, and run#

In either case, you can start a batch migration.

You can configure many settings, including migrating data only within a specific date range.

When you are done configuring, click migrate to start the job.