Transfer Microsoft 365 Tenant to Tenant with All Permissions

Migrating a Microsoft 365 tenant involves more than transferring data. One of the biggest challenges is preserving permissions across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. Without maintaining files, folders, and sharing permissions, users can lose access to critical business data, disrupting collaboration, and increasing IT overhead.

Manual methods often break these access controls, which causes user disruption and possible security breaches. We at CloudFuze simplifies this transition with an advanced migration engine that migrates your data while keeping all permissions perfectly intact.

In this guide, we will take you through the step-by-step process of carrying out a Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration with files, folders, and access permissions intact.

What Is a Microsoft 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Migration?

A Microsoft tenant-to-tenant migration consists of transferring the below data from one Microsoft 365 tenant to another:

• OneDrive to OneDrive files
• SharePoint to SharePoint
• Microsoft Teams to Teams
• Outlook to Outlook

Microsoft 365 is used by more than 450 million paid commercial seats worldwide, making tenant-to-tenant migrations increasingly common and generally needed in situations such as:

• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Company rebranding or restructuring
• IT consolidation for global/regional units
• Compliance and data residency requirements

The Critical Factor: Maintaining Permissions During Microsoft 365 Tenant Transfer

Permissions in Microsoft 365 are tied to Microsoft Entra ID identities, Access Control Lists (ACLs), SharePoint permission inheritance, Microsoft Teams memberships, and external sharing links. Losing these relationships during a Microsoft 365 cross-tenant migration can result in broken access controls and collaboration issues.

Some common consequences include:

• Broken collaboration workflows
• Unauthorized access or data exposure
• Time-consuming post-migration permission fixes
• Increased IT support tickets

Our M365 tenant migration tool, CloudFuze Migrate, is designed to address these challenges by automatically mapping user identities, preserving ACLs and permission inheritance, maintaining Teams memberships, and retaining file and folder access throughout the migration.

CloudFuze Enables Accurate Microsoft 365 Tenant Migrations and Permissions Preservation

Companies trust CloudFuze’s enterprise-level Microsoft 365 Tenant Migration tool for full tenant transfer. Our M365 tenant migration solution ensures the preservation of file and folder structures, metadata, and user permissions.

Here’s how:

• Retention of Sharing Permissions: Precisely replicates root and inner-level permissions.
• Metadata Preservation: Preserves timestamps, file versions, external sharing, and shared links.
• Access Control Lists (ACLs): Maintain file- and folder-level ACLs.
• Automated User Mapping: Automatically maps users between tenants even if UPNs are different.
• OneDrive & SharePoint Migration: Migrates data and permissions with precision across both environments.
• Security & Compliance: End-to-end encryption, RSA 2048, SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, ISO 27001 and other compliance standards.
• Scalability & Customization: Handles multi-terabyte payloads, automates Teams chat and channel migrations, and supports phased deployment scheduling.
• Managed Migration Services: Planning, monitoring, and execution with top-notch experts.

Permissions Preserved During a Microsoft 365 Tenant Transfer with CloudFuze

With CloudFuze, you can rest assured knowing that your user will have the same access right even after a tenant to tenant Microsoft 365 migration. We make sure that permission is preserved across files and folders at every level.

1. Root Folder Permissions

All permissions and access levels set on your root folders are preserved when using CloudFuze. Users don’t need to configure anything again.

2. Root File Permissions

Permissions for files stored in the root directory are migrated along with their assigned access levels.

3. Subfolder Permissions

Custom permissions, including unique inheritance settings on subfolders, are preserved throughout the migration.

4. Inner File Permissions

Files within nested folders retain their original permissions and user access levels. This prevents unauthorized access or permission loss after migration.

5. External Sharing Permissions

CloudFuze will also migrate all the relevant settings regarding files/folders that have been made available to external people/users. These include guest access permissions, sharing permissions, etc., wherever supported in the target/destination tenant.

This comprehensive permission preservation helps organizations maintain secure collaboration, eliminates post-migration administrative effort, and enables users to access files and folders immediately after the tenant transfer.

How to Perform Microsoft Tenant-to-Tenant Migration with Permissions Intact

Step 1: Pre-Migration Planning

Audit your OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams data from the perspective of mapping the source users to the destination users. Also, define your migration scope. If your tenant has different UPNs, you can use CloudFuze’s user mapping functionality in CSV format.

Step 2: Platform Configuration

Login to CloudFuze platform and integrate both source and destination Microsoft 365 tenancies by providing admin credentials. Provide OAuth permissions in order to create a secure connection for the migration process.

Step 3: Permissions Configuration

Perform user mapping through the User Mapping option available on the CloudFuze platform, map the source and destination user accounts, and choose the desired workload (OneDrive, SharePoint, or Microsoft Teams), while maintaining user permissions and access level.

Turn on the following options:

• Migrate permissions
• Maintain links and timestamps
• Keep file versions intact

Step 4: Run Pilot Migration (Optional but Highly Recommended)

Perform pilot migration for selected users to check data integrity, permission migration, and user access level. It will help to find out the possible problems during migration before transferring entire tenancy.

Step 5: Run Full Migration (One-time Migration)

Start the one-time migration to transfer your Microsoft 365 data. After the initial migration, CloudFuze performs a Delta Migration to synchronize new or modified content so that no changes are missed before cutover. Throughout the process, you can monitor progress, logs, and migration status through the real-time dashboard.

Step 6: Post-Migration Validation

Verify that files and folders appear in the right locations. Test permission integrity:

• Can intended users access files?
• Are shared links functional?
• Are team members still connected with the correct roles?

Our Microsoft 365 Tenant migration tool provides detailed migration reports, including status, total data migrated, and total pairs migrated.

Get a full pre- and post-migration audit. Request your free CloudFuze migration assessment.

Common Permission Types That Need Preservation

While migrating your Microsoft 365 tenant to another, it is vital not only to migrate data but also to preserve user permissions on it.

The absence of permissions or wrong migration of permissions will affect user workflows, may create security issues, and increase IT helpdesk requests. Here are the main permission types that should be preserved:

• Permissions to Files/Folders: Ensures that users will have the same view/edit/ownership access to their files/folders in OneDrive/SharePoint
• Permissions for Sites in SharePoint: Ensures that users will have the same site owners/members/visitors and custom permission groups on their sites in SharePoint
• Permissions for Microsoft Teams: Ensures that users will have the same permissions to be owners/members/guest users/channels in Microsoft Teams
• ACLs: Ensures that users will have item-level permissions and folder-level permissions that allow access to certain content
• External Sharing Permissions: Preserves the ability to share links securely and permissions granted to external users, where possible.
• File Ownership & Metadata: Ensures that document ownership and metadata (timestamps, version history, etc.) are preserved.

Preserving these permissions allows users to work as usual without any IT intervention in post-migration.

Why Manual Migration Often Fails

While Microsoft offers the native capabilities for migrating, sometimes it is too difficult to move tenants manually in case of large amounts of data and users. Among the most frequent issues are:

• Inaccurate permissions due to the necessity to set up them manually.
• Problems with user mapping in case the User Principal Names (UPNs) are different for source and destination tenants.
• Metadata loss, such as timestamps, file versions, and ownership.
• Lost links, which prevent people from accessing shared documents.
• Limited automation, which makes the whole procedure time- and resource-consuming.
• Increased risks of human errors in case of management of a huge number of users, sites, and permissions manually.
• Increased downtime may affect the work of your company and make your employees less productive.

Automated migration tools like CloudFuze help you avoid all these problems by dealing with user mapping, permissions, and migration validation during the whole process.

And also, here is a video where all the migration steps are explained for you to move files between two SharePoint Online accounts.

What CloudFuze Helps You Avoid

• Broken file and folder permissions
• Loss of external sharing access
• Manual permission recreation
• User downtime after cutover
• Compliance and audit issues

Best Practices for Seamless Microsoft 365 Tenant Migration with Permissions

• Use CSV mapping if UPNs are different across tenants
• Run a pilot migration to reduce risk
• Allow delta sync to capture incremental changes after the one-time migration
• Track permission accuracy
• Inform users of URL or folder path changes after migration
• Perform post-migration validation to verify permissions, shared links, and user access before completing the cutover.

Protect Your Corporate Access Structure

When planning an enterprise M365 tenant-to-tenant migration, your security structure is just as critical as the files themselves. Allowing permissions to break during a transition creates unnecessary data exposure risks and frustrates your workforce.

CloudFuze removes the guesswork from cross-tenant migrations. By preserving complex folder ACLs, mapping external guest links, and automating user UPN changes, CloudFuze delivers a secure, compliant, and seamless transition.

Ready to safeguard your data integrity during your next tenant move? Schedule an Enterprise Migration Consultation with CloudFuze today to design a zero-downtime transition built around your organization’s exact needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does CloudFuze retain OneDrive folder permissions during a Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration?

Yes. CloudFuze preserves OneDrive folder permissions, including file-level access, sharing settings, ownership, and access control permissions. This helps users retain the same access after Microsoft 365 tenant migration.

2. Does CloudFuze migrate SharePoint site and item-level permissions?

Yes. CloudFuze supports SharePoint Online permission migration, preserving site permissions, document library permissions, item-level Access Control Lists (ACLs), and custom permission inheritance throughout the tenant-to-tenant migration.

3. How does CloudFuze manage user mapping between Microsoft 365 tenants?

CloudFuze simplifies Microsoft 365 user mapping through automated user matching and CSV-based mapping. It allows accurate identity mapping even when User Principal Names (UPNs) or email domains differ between tenants.

4. How do you execute a Microsoft 365 tenant transfer while maintaining permissions?

In order to carry out the tenant-to-tenant migration in Microsoft 365 while preserving the permissions, it is necessary to choose the migration solution, which allows to preserve the permissions in OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams, to correctly map the users using Microsoft Entra ID, to migrate the metadata and to verify the users’ access post migration.

5. What common issues can arise when transferring a Microsoft 365 tenant, and how can they be resolved?

The most common problems that occur in the process of tenant migration include the breaking of permissions, the wrong user mapping, the loss of metadata, unsuccessful migrations, and the breaking of sharing links. Such problems may be avoided by performing pre-migration assessment, automated identity mapping, permission preservation, Delta Migration, and post-migration validation.

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using third-party tools for Microsoft 365 tenant transfer?

Enterprise Microsoft 365 migration tools provide automated user mapping, permission preservation, metadata migration, detailed reporting, and faster migration for large environments. While third-party tools involve licensing costs and initial configuration, they significantly reduce manual effort, migration risks, and business downtime.

7. What are the recommended next steps after successfully transferring a Microsoft 365 tenant?

After completing a Microsoft 365 tenant migration, validate user access, verify SharePoint Online and OneDrive permissions, test Microsoft Teams functionality, perform a final Delta Migration, review migration reports, and monitor the environment to ensure a smooth transition.

8. Can Microsoft preserve permissions during a cross-tenant migration?

Native Microsoft cross-tenant migration tools preserve only certain permissions and often require manual identity mapping and validation. Enterprise migration platforms like CloudFuze automate the preservation of OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams permissions, ACLs, metadata, and user access, reducing migration complexity and post-migration effort. For more information, visit the official page.