SharePoint's versioning settings control how version history is stored in document libraries. When ShareGate Migrate copies files, the destination library's versioning configuration determines which versions are kept.
If your tenant uses Automatic versioning, version history may be incomplete or show unexpected expiry dates after migration.
What Automatic versioning does
Microsoft introduced Automatic versioning in SharePoint Online as a storage optimization feature.
When enabled at the tenant or library level, SharePoint automatically manages how many versions are retained and can expire versions after a set time period.
This setting can be enabled by default on some tenants, including Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) tenants.
For more information on how Automatic versioning works in SharePoint, see the Microsoft article Set version limits for a document library.
How it affects migrations
ShareGate Migrate copies all available versions from the source. Once those versions land at the destination, SharePoint immediately applies its Automatic versioning rules to them. This can result in:
Versions appearing with an expiry date in version history at the destination ("expires in N days")
Fewer versions being retained than expected over time, as SharePoint trims them according to its automatic limits
Inconsistent version counts between source and destination
Configure versioning before migrating
Before running a migration, check the version settings on your destination document libraries. Setting versioning to Manual ensures that versions copied by ShareGate Migrate are not subject to automatic expiry rules.
Go to the destination document library in SharePoint.
Open Library settings.
Click Versioning settings.
Under Document Version History, set versioning to Manual and select No time limit.
Click OK.