Common Migration Issues and What To Do About Them

This section summarizes issues to be aware of when migrating from SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2001 to SharePoint 2003 technologies and explain how to resolve these issues.

Migrating Sites When Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Connections

To migrate sites using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration tool over an SSL connection, specific conditions of the source and destination servers must be met. These conditions are as follows:

• The computer running Smigrate must trust the certificate authority that issued the SSL certificate. If the computer running Smigrate does not trust the certificate authority that issued the SSL certificate, it must be added to the list of trusted certificates.

• The hostname provided when running Smigrate must match the hostname on the SSL certificate.

• The certificate must be valid and cannot be expired.

Migrating Sites over a Proxy Server Connection

It is not recommended to migrate sites over a proxy server connection. Issues such as authentication differences between the proxy server and the destination web server may exist. This can result in rejection of the username and password entered when the Microsoft SharePoint Migration tool was run and thus cause the migration to fail.

Migrating Sites Across Domains

When migrating a site to a destination web server in another domain, failures can occur even if the -u and -pw parameters are used to supply the required username and password. This problem can be resolved by doing the following on the computer running the SharePoint Migration tool:

1.	Access the Internet Options section of the Control Panel (normally by choosing Start, Settings, Control Panel, Internet Options).
2.	Click on the Security tab.
3.	Click on the Internet zone that contains the destination site and then click on Custom Level in the Security Level for This Zone section.
4.	Scroll down to the User Authentication section and under Logon, click Prompt for User Name and Password.
5.	Click OK to save settings.

This enables a username and password to be entered when the site is accessed.

SharePoint Migration Tool Errors

This section explains errors that may occur when using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration (Smigrate) tool.

• A message about the server administration program and the server extensions on the web server not being compatible or being too old to use with the administration program appears.

  This error occurs if the site being migrated has not been updated to work with Smigrate. Download and install the SharePoint Team Services upgrade from Microsoft's website.

• When restoring a site using Smigrate, a message appears indicating that a site template has already been applied to this site.

  When restoring a site using Smigrate, the site that you are restoring to cannot have a template applied to it. The site must be created on the Windows SharePoint Services server before the restore can be done, but to create the site without applying a template, exit the browser at the point where it prompts for selection of the template.

Alerts Were Not Restored

When the site is restored, if the user account was a local user account on the original server, or if the user no longer exists at the time of the restore, the alerts for that user account will not be restored.

Incorrect Creation Times on Surveys and Other Lists

The creation time for lists (including surveys) is one of the elements not migrated by the Smigrate tool.

Incorrect Site Language on the Restored Site

This issue exists when the language of the site that was backed up is not available on the site used for the restore.

More Views Exist Than on My Original Site

When migrating from SharePoint Team Services to Windows SharePoint Services, the restored site contains the views from the migrated site plus the default views for Windows SharePoint Services. Any unnecessary views can be deleted.

Currency Formats Change After Migration

The Windows SharePoint Migration tool converts obsolete currencies to the current currencies. For example, the European currencies are converted to the Euro. However, only the currency type is changed; no conversion is done to the amounts. Any conversions to amounts must be manually performed.

Entries Have the Created By or Modified By Fields Attributed to the Wrong Person

When the migration is being performed, if there are references to users in the source who are not available on the destination site, those users are replaced with the user running the migration. To prevent this from occurring, make sure that all users from the original site are members of the destination site.