All the ways to change your SharePoint site’s URL

Previously, while working with SharePoint on-premise, it was nearly impossible to consider altering the site URL after building the site — we used to claim that we could modify the site title but not the site URL. These days, SharePoint has gone through many revolutionary changes, and Microsoft has made SharePoint professionals’ lives much easier, one of which is changing or renaming the site URL – now, we should not be concerned about the site URL; if your site URL does not meet your requirements, you have the flexibility to rename or change the site URL. Previously, the SharePoint Online URL could not be altered, which was a huge issue for firms that rebranded or went through a Merger, Acquisition, or Divestiture (MAD). Because OneDrive for Business is primarily based on SharePoint, this limitation also applies to OneDrive for Business Sharing Links. This post will teach you how to alter or rename the SharePoint site URL using a PowerShell script and the current SharePoint admin center UI.

  1. How to change the Site URL in the SharePoint admin center
  2. How to change the Site URL with the help of PowerShell
  3. What are the consequences of altering a SharePoint Online site address

Above are some of the key points that will be covered in this blog. Ensure you go through each point thoroughly to make sure you have a good understanding of what is required to both change the URL and some of the repercussions associated with the changing of a URL. Follow through for more information on all the ways to change your SharePoint site’s URL.

How to change the Site URL in the SharePoint admin center

  • First, sign in to your Office 365 account.
  • Use the app launcher and navigate to admin.
  • Click on “Show All” to reveal “Admin centers”.
  • Here click on “SharePoint”.
  • Under “Sites” click on “Active sites”.
  • Check the box next to the URL you wish to update and then click the I in a circle.
  • Click “Edit” next to the URL on the “General” tab.
  • Enter the new URL, it will check to see whether the address is available, and then click “Save”.
  • It will then give you the opportunity to modify the Site Name as well, which can be skipped if you want.

Prior to this renaming option, the two options were to relocate to another tenant or to live with the URL problem. The renaming program has been in different phases for some time, and as of the publication date of this post, we finally have a strong formal approach for this Private Preview program. Clients can enter the program by clicking on the link at the bottom of the screen.

The big thing about this renaming is that users should not have to re-share documents. Those of us who have done a lot of tenant-to-tenant work before understanding the magnitude of this impact. We saw a potential demo of the SharePoint cross tenancy conversion procedure at Microsoft Ignite last year. While the migration tool is not yet in preview, we witnessed a demo that demonstrated this documentation redirection from the source tenancy to the target tenant.

How to change the Site URL with the help of PowerShell

Now we will learn how to change the SharePoint Online site URL using PowerShell. The steps we took to change the site address in SharePoint Online using the SharePoint admin center are the same steps we will do here using the PowerShell script.

Step by step process – How to change the Site URL with the help of PowerShell

  • Firstly, go to your Windows taskbar.
  • In the search section type in “PowerShell”.
  • Open Powershell.
  • Input the script shown below.
  • Ensure “#Paramaters area” URL and new inputs are edited.
  • Press enter to run the script and see the results.
#Set Parameters
$AdminCenterURL="https://crescent-admin.sharepoint.com"
$SiteURL = "https://crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/suppliers"
$NewSiteURL = "https://crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/vendors"
$NewSiteTitle = "Vendors"
 
#Connect to SharePoint Online
Connect-SPOService -Url $AdminCenterURL -Credential (Get-Credential)
 
#Get all site collections
$Sites = Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select -ExpandProperty URL
 
If($Sites -notcontains $NewSiteURL)
{
    #Rename SharePoint Online site URL using PowerShell
    Start-SPOSiteRename -Identity $SiteURL -NewSiteUrl $NewSiteURL -NewSiteTitle $NewSiteTitle -Confirm:$false
}
Else
{
    Write-Host "New Site URL '$NewSiteURL' is not available!" -f Yellow
}

Windows PowerShell is a powerful tool for automating activities and simplifying configuration. It can be used to automate nearly any job in the Windows environment, including active directory and exchange. It’s no surprise that it’s become a favorite among sysadmins and advanced Windows users.

Microsoft’s PowerShell language is a high-level proprietary programming syntax designed to allow system administrators to automate tasks and configurations. The language is object-oriented in nature, however, it can only be used in Windows systems. It is a component of the.NET framework and often contains C# code underpinning its operations, however, knowledge of C# is not required to understand PowerShell. Perl, which is used in comparable settings on Linux systems, is the most similar language to PowerShell.

What are the consequences of altering a SharePoint Online site address?

So far, we’ve learned how to update or rename site URLs using both the SharePoint admin center and a PowerShell script; but, there are certain drawbacks to this procedure that we must address. The consequences of altering a website’s address are discussed further below.

Apps

If your organization’s applications refer to the site’s URL, you may need to republish the apps if the site’s address changes.

PowerApps-Created Custom Forms

After the site URL changes, we must recreate the custom form in PowerApps.

Hub sites

If the site is linked to a hub, it must be reconnected when the site URL is updated.

Forms in InfoPath

InfoPath forms that relate to URLs may not function properly if the site address is updated; we must also update the Infopath form or data connection URL.

List View is a web component

When a List View web component is added to a page and scoped to a certain folder in that list, the web part may produce an error if the site URL changes. To resolve this issue, either update the web component and change the folder location, or delete the web part from the page and re-add it.

Forms from Microsoft

If the site is a Microsoft 365 group-connected site using Microsoft Forms forms, any File Upload inquiries in the forms will fail. Recreate the file upload questions to allow respondents to upload files again.

In-depth step by step process: How to change the Site URL in the SharePoint admin center

Step by step breakdown:

  • First sign in to your Office 365 account.

Use your account details or if you have a current Skype account with the Office account in question, you can use this.

  • Use the application launcher to navigate towards “Admin”.

The launcher is illustrated by nine dots in the right corner, click on it and find “Admin” as shown above.

  • Click on “Show All” to reveal “Admin centers”.
  • Here click on “SharePoint”.
  • Under “Sites” click on “Active sites”.
  • Check the box next to the URL you wish to update and then click the I in a circle.
  • Click “Edit” next to the URL on the “General” tab.
  • Enter the new URL, it will check to see whether the address is available, and then click “Save.”
  • It will then give you the opportunity to modify the Site Name as well, which can be skipped if you want.

That’s it for this Blog thank you for taking time out to read our content, please feel free to email our team about how it went if you followed the steps or if you need more help with the questions we answered in this Blog.

Saajid Gangat

Saajid Gangat has been a researcher and content writer at Business Tech Planet since 2021. Saajid is a tech-savvy writer with expertise in web and graphic design and has extensive knowledge of Microsoft 365, Adobe, Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and more! You can connect with Saajid on Linkedin.

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