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How does SharePoint Migration Tool map users from file shares?

Anonymous
2021-03-25T00:43:19+00:00

I should start off by saying that I'm not migrating/mapping any permissions. Permissions aren't at issue in this question. Does anyone know where SPMT pulls metadata like "Created By" and "Modified By" from when migrating from an NTFS file share? It's not necessary, but I thought it would be nice to have users' names rather than BUILTIN\administrators.

The file share is currently just on a local HD. There is no Active Directory. But there is metadata in Office files about who created and modified them. I tested it out, and it didn't seem to use any of that metadata. It just wanted to map using the current local user, which was different from the author / creator / user who last modified. What exactly is the source of "Created By" etc.? Does it just use the NTFS owner of the file for both of those fields? Does it differentiate at all between Created By and Modified By, then? I never see anything on a regular file share denoting who created it and who last modified it.

To put it another way, when using the user mapping CSV file, what is it comparing the column A values to when it chooses the column B values for "Created By" etc.?

Microsoft 365 and Office | SharePoint | For business | Windows

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Anonymous
2021-03-25T07:06:21+00:00

Hi L20,

Thank you for posting your question in this community. From your description, you would like to migrate the file from your local hard disk in SharePoint Migration Tool, but you found that the migration tool migrate the fille successfully, but the metadata of the file, such as Created by Modified by is following the administrators rather than the users.

Based on your scenario, I did a test with SharePoint Migration Tool to mirage the files from local disk with File Share. And I noticed that the similar behavior as you mentioned above, which the metadata of the file such as the author, last modified by didn’t migrate into my SharePoint Online site, which “Created by” and “Modified by” columns are using the “System account” of SharePoint Online.

I did some research and findings, but it seems that SharePoint Migration Tool didn’t provide an “Metadata” option to migrate file metadata in File Share. Because this forum is majorly focusing on the built-in feature and usage of SharePoint Online. For the migration concern, I kindly suggest you can raise this question in Microsoft Q&A community with SharePoint Online tag or SharePoint administration tag. The related support team there can share more professional ideas and suggestion with the SharePoint migration tool in this scenario. Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,

Dihao

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-05-02T22:49:06+00:00

    From what I've seen, for both files and dirs, it pulls from the NTFS owner. Created By and Modified By in 365 both get that. And the only way I've found to banish the ubiquitous "BUILTIN\Administrators" that you mention is to use the csv mapping file.

    BUILTIN\Administrators has this special security identifier: S-1-5-32-544

    So, for example, the csv line could be:

    S-1-5-32-544,Office Staff,TRUE

    Meaning that security identifier should be mapped to a 365 group called "Office Staff" (or whatever), and because it's a group the third field must be TRUE (users are FALSE).

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