Box Migration: More Details

Here are the top take-ways to be aware of for pre- and post-migration, as well for the days of migration.

Pre-Migration

  1. The following items are not migrated:  Individual files over 15 Gigabytes.  You may choose to save your large files (such as video, audio, and images) to your Kaltura MediaSpace.
  2. Box Comments which are posted in the Activity panel (on the far right of the preview page) will not migrate to Office 365.  To preserve any Box comments you wish to keep, copy and paste them directly into the file.  Any comments made directly to Office 365 files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint files) will remain post-migration.
  3. Box Notes are automatically converted to Word documents.  Post-migration, the converted notes will be in the same folder location as they were in Box; in addition, they will also be in a OneDrive folder named "My Box Notes".
  4. The migration will only copy the most current version of a file to Office 365 (if you have multiple versions of a document).  If you need to preserve the other versions, please refer to the instructions in the Pre-Migration Preparation of Box Files (in the section "Preserve Previous Document Versions").
  5. Office 365 has limits to the length of file and folder path names and will not accept certain special characters.  During the Box to Office 365 migration, special characters will be automatically removed. If special characters in file names are essential, it is best to rename the files before migration.  For more details, please see the Pre-Migration Preparation of Box Files (in the section "Change File and Folder Names to Fit Office 365 Naming Conventions").

During Migration

Please use our Virtual Help Desk (via Zoom) to ask questions and receive assistance.  (The Zoom room number is 8142174357.)

Post-Migration

  1. Internal collaborators within Penn State will retain their permissions on shared folders in Office 365.  However, the permissions for external collaborators will need to be re-shared since their permissions will not transfer during migration.
  2. Communicate with your colleagues and students who have shared links to your files.  Let them know the link(s) will break and that you will send them an updated link as soon as possible.
  3. Vanity/custom links are not supported in Office 365.  You can create vanity and custom links using services such as Bitly or Rebrandly.
  4. After migration, you can login to the Office 365 web site to view your files.  To do so, open OneDrive and from the left column, select:  "My Files".  Migrated files are located in the folder called “Box Migration Data”.  To view the files that are shared with you or shared by you:  From the left column, select:  "Shared".  Then select the appropriate tab:  "Shared with You" or "Shared by You".  For more details, please refer to Post-Migration File Considerations.
  5. After migration, you can access your Box files, but as read-only.  You can also still download files from Box.