When you copy content between 2 SharePoint environments, your items might rely on site objects or other content that does not exist at the destination.

That content is migrated as dependencies to the destination with Copy structure and content.

Dependencies range from site objects like columns and content types to lists from which your lookup columns get data.

The migrated dependencies can be reviewed in your migration report.

With content-only migrations, the copy operation depends on your existing destination structure to provide more flexibility with your metadata and list structure.

This means ShareGate Migrate does not migrate your content's SharePoint dependencies with Copy content only.

To preserve metadata, you must ensure dependent structure objects like columns and looked-up lists are already available at the destination before you launch your migration.

With Copy structure and content, ShareGate Migrate reproduces your source's site objects as best as possible at the destination.

To do so, it copies dependent items based on the relative location selected in your copy settings. There are three possible choices:

To learn more about the location of your dependencies, see Copy options.