Home page migration (Home.aspx and default.aspx)

With SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007 the default home page is a default.aspx page located in the root folder of your site. This legacy method of setting the home page makes it difficult to understand where the file is located and how to migrate it by itself.

Index

• The default home page in SharePoint 2010 and above
• The default home page in SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007
• Migrate default.aspx with Copy content
• Set your home page

The default home page in SharePoint 2010 and above

When you build a new site in SharePoint 2010 and above, your homepage is created as a Home.aspx file in your Site Pages library.

Screenshot of Home.aspx in SharePoint Designer:

The URL of you home page will be something like this: site collection URL/SitePages/Home.aspx

The default home page in SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007

When you build a new site in SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007, your home page is created as a default.aspx file in the root folder of your site.

Screenshot of default.aspx in SharePoint Designer:

The URL of you home page will be something like this: site collection URL/default.aspx

In this scenario, you cannot use Copy content to migrate your home page. This is because ShareGate Desktop does not access the root folder of your site with Copy content.

Note: This is the default for SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007, but you might have your home page set as a default.aspx page in the root folder with newer versions of SharePoint as well. For example, you could have a site in SharePoint 2013 that was previously migrated from SharePoint 2007 with ShareGate Desktop (the app preserves the legacy home page structure during a migration).

To migrate your home page in this case, you have to run a full site migration using Copy structure and content or you can try the workaround in the section below.

Migrate default.aspx with Copy content

Migrating a default.aspx page in the root folder of your site without having to migrate your whole site is useful if you want to troubleshoot the migration of that page, or if you want to move it to a page library.

You will need the version of SharePoint Designer that works with your version of SharePoint at the source. You can find SharePoint Designer from Microsoft for free online.

1. Open your site in SharePoint Designer.
2. Go to All Files.
3. Select the default.aspx file.
4. Click on Export File in the top right corner.
5. Save the ASPX file on your drive.
6. Select the Site Pages library or any other library you want to migrate the default.aspx file to.
7. Click on Import Files in the top right corner.
8. Import the default.aspx file you just saved on your drive.
9. Open ShareGate Desktop.
10. With Copy Content, migrate the default.aspx file from the library you selected in step (6) to the Site Pages library in the destination.

Set your home page

You can set another ASPX file as your home page in SharePoint Designer.

For example, if you imported default.aspx in your Site pages library, you can set it as your home page in that library instead of using the page in the root folder of your site.

All you have to do is to right click on the ASPX file in SharePoint Designer, and select Set as Home Page in the menu.