Post-migration support requests often start the same way: a user cannot find a file that was definitely there before. As a SharePoint administrator, working through a systematic troubleshooting process is faster and more reliable than hunting through settings randomly. Here is the checklist.
Check the Recycle Bin First
Files deleted from SharePoint move to the site recycle bin and remain recoverable for 93 days. Check the secondary recycle bin on the affected SharePoint site before doing anything else. This resolves a meaningful percentage of "missing file" requests with minimal effort.
Verify Permissions
Permission issues are the second most common cause of inaccessible files. Verify access at multiple levels: site, document library, folder, and individual file. Complex permission structures, particularly those involving broken inheritance, can make a file invisible to a user even when everything looks correct at the site level.
Check Content Approval Settings
When content approval is enabled on a library, uploaded files are hidden from most users until approved. Only the person who uploaded the file and users with manager-level permissions can see items awaiting approval. If content approval is enabled and the file was recently uploaded, this is likely the problem.
Check Check-Out Status
Files that are checked out or lack a checked-in version may not be visible to standard users. Review the check-out status of recently uploaded or modified files if a user reports that a file they know exists is not showing up.
Review Required Metadata
Classic mode SharePoint sites sometimes enforce required metadata fields. Files with missing required metadata can trigger enforced checkout, making the file invisible to standard users. An administrator can fill in the required metadata to restore normal visibility.
Check Audience Targeting
Audience targeting restricts the visibility of navigational links, pages, news, highlighted content, and other web parts to specific audiences. This feature typically does not migrate from on-premises SharePoint environments, which can cause navigation items and content to disappear entirely after a migration.
Understand Migration Limitations
If none of the above resolves the issue, the file may have hit a migration limitation. Common causes include:
- Files exceeding the 250 GB upload limit
- Restricted file names or extensions (.lock, CON, PRN, and others)
- File paths exceeding 400 characters
- Characters in file names not permitted in Microsoft 365, including quotation marks, asterisks, colons, angle brackets, question marks, forward and back slashes, and pipe characters
Last Resort Options
If the file cannot be located through these steps, check pre-migration backups for the original file, upload it manually to the correct location, or contact Microsoft support for additional assistance with files that should have migrated but did not.