Known Google limitations, and how each is handled

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 do some things differently. Here is what that means for your people, and what happens to each item in a MigrationSanity migration. We walk through the ones that apply to you before your move starts.

Mail: Gmail to Exchange Online

Archived mail lands in Archive, not the Inbox: What it meansGmail's Inbox is not all your mail. Anything archived or moved to a label left the Inbox, and Exchange has no All Mail view.; How it's handledIt arrives in Outlook's Archive folder with its labels as categories, so people find it there or by searching a category.
Labels become categories, not folders: What it meansA Gmail message can carry several labels; an Exchange message lives in one folder.; How it's handledEvery label becomes an Outlook category of the same name, so a message with three labels is still findable by all three. Stars become flags, and colored stars become colored categories.
Mailbox settings are not copied: What it meansFilters, signatures, vacation responders, delegates, aliases, snoozes, forwarding and POP or IMAP settings belong to the Gmail account, not to messages.; How it's handledYour people or your admin re-create them in Microsoft 365.
Spam and Trash are left behind: What it meansMoving spam imports risk, and Trash is mail already thrown away.; How it's handledBoth are deliberately out of scope. Your report shows how many messages were excluded from each, as counts only.
Very large messages: What it meansMessages over roughly 80 MB are skipped by default, and Microsoft does not accept attachments over 150 MB.; How it's handledEach one is listed in your report with a link that opens the exact message in Gmail, for the mailbox owner only.
Drafts keep the addresses as typed: What it meansIf you are also changing email domains, a migrated draft still addresses the old domain.; How it's handledReview recipients before sending a migrated draft.

Files: Google Drive to SharePoint and OneDrive

Some Google item types have no Microsoft file: What it meansGoogle Forms, Sites, Jamboard files, Apps Script projects, shortcuts, My Maps and Vids have no SharePoint or OneDrive equivalent.; How it's handledThey are not migrated, and no broken placeholder is left behind. Each one is listed by name in your report.
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides become Office files: What it meansA Google Doc is not a file Google can hand over as-is. It becomes a real Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, and Drawings become PDFs. Unusual formatting or advanced charts may need a quick look.; How it's handledFiles that exceed Google's automated export limit (roughly 10 MB when exported) are listed by name in your report for manual handling.
Version history and comments: What it meansOnly the current version of a file moves. Comment threads on uploaded files and file descriptions do not carry over.; How it's handledKeep a copy of any version or comment thread you rely on before your Google access ends.
Shared files live under Shared in OneDrive: What it meansA file shared with you migrates once, with its owner. OneDrive shows files shared with you in its Shared view, not inside your own folders.; How it's handledSharing from My Drive is re-created for the people in the move, with the same read or edit rights, and no notification emails are sent. Any share that could not be re-created or confirmed is listed in your report with what to do.
Each shared drive gets a SharePoint site: What it meansEach shared drive uses its own SharePoint team site, without a Microsoft 365 group or Teams. File content and folder structure move, but who a file or folder was shared with does not.; How it's handledA setup script run by your SharePoint administrator creates each new site and adds Managers to Owners; Content managers and Contributors to Members; and Commenters and Viewers to Visitors. SharePoint Members can delete files, but Google Contributors cannot. Visitors can read but not comment. People outside your organization are not added. People who are not part of the migration, and people whose Microsoft 365 account could not be confirmed, are not added either; the setup summary lists them. When group reading is allowed, the script adds the group's people individually, so later changes to the group do not carry over. For a shared drive placed in a site you already have, the script leaves that site's access unchanged. Your report lists every file or folder that was shared outside your organization, with who it reached, so you can decide how to re-share it in SharePoint. A file inside a shared folder is covered by the folder's line. A shared drive with members from outside your organization, or with a member Google does not fully describe, gets its own line naming each of them, or saying when Google did not return an address. A group from outside your organization is named by its address; the people inside any group, including your own organization's groups, are not listed.
Folders take the date of the move: What it meansFiles keep their created and modified dates; in the rare case Microsoft refuses a file's date, that file carries the date of the move. Folders are created at the destination, so they carry the date the migration made them.; How it's handledNothing to do. Sorting and searching by file date work as before.
Files whose folder cannot be traced: What it meansA My Drive file whose folder path cannot be traced back to your My Drive lands in a folder named Migrated from shared folders.; How it's handledLook in that folder after the move and file each one where you want it.
Empty folders and Trash: What it meansA folder is created only when a file inside it moves, and Drive Trash is not migrated.; How it's handledNothing to do unless you rely on an empty folder; re-create it after the move.

Calendars: Google Calendar to Outlook

Meetings arrive as a record, not live invites: What it meansEach meeting lands on your own Outlook calendar. Nobody is contacted and no invitations are sent.; How it's handledWho was invited and how each person replied are kept as text on the event. When someone else organized the meeting, the organizer is named too.
A few repeat patterns are copied meeting by meeting: What it meansMost recurring meetings become a genuine Outlook series. A few patterns would land on different dates in Outlook.; How it's handledThose are copied as individual meetings on Google's dates, with future occurrences through 730 days (about two years) after the day they are copied. Each copy says it was part of a repeating series and states the schedule as it was when copied.
Meeting links stay Google links: What it meansVideo links, dial-in numbers and PINs, meeting IDs and passcodes, conference notes and attachment links are written on the meeting as they were in Google.; How it's handledThey stay Google links and numbers, so whether they still work depends on the Google account and meeting behind them. Replace any you still need with Microsoft 365 equivalents.
Calendar exceptions are listed in your report: What it meansA calendar Outlook would not create, a calendar whose changed or canceled dates could not be read, a one-off change to a recurring meeting that could not be applied or matched to its series, and a single date of a recurring meeting edited in Google after the meeting was copied each appear in your report as a row that needs your attention, named by meeting and date or by calendar.; How it's handledLater runs retry what they can, and a row moves to the resolved list only when a run sees the problem gone or a fix made in Microsoft 365 is recorded. Outlook is not changed to match a date edited later. An edit after the copy to a one-time meeting, or to every date of a series, is not detected, except that a date already changed on its own is then listed as changed. A canceled occurrence that could not be matched stays on your Outlook calendar if it is there; delete it there.
Some calendar items stay behind: What it meansBirthdays and working-location entries do not migrate as events. Out-of-office and focus-time blocks and events Gmail added from email migrate as ordinary events, without Google's automatic declining.; How it's handledBirthdays with a year reappear once your contacts migrate. Set up working location in Outlook's working hours and location settings if you use it. An out-of-office block shows as away and a focus-time block as busy, and each one names its Google kind in its details. Google's automatic declining and its decline message do not carry over, so turn on automatic replies in Outlook if you need them.

Contacts: Google Contacts to Outlook

Only saved contacts move: What it meansGoogle's Other contacts list, built automatically from people you have emailed, is not transferred.; How it's handledSave anyone you need as a contact before the migration.

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