Comparison · Microsoft Migration Manager vs mydocs.school
Two tools, two different jobs.
Migration Manager is for IT admins moving content into Microsoft 365 at the tenant level. mydocs.school is for students taking their own work out. The overlap is essentially zero.
| SharePoint Migration Manager | mydocs.school | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | Tenant admin with Migration Admin role | The student themselves |
| Direction | Into Microsoft 365 (SharePoint / OneDrive) | Out of Microsoft 365 (to the student's laptop) |
| Granularity | Bulk tenant-level migration | Per-student self-service |
| OneNote handling | Files travel as-is; class notebook structure not preserved per-student | Class notebook scoped to the student's own section group |
| Destination | A Microsoft 365 tenant | A zip file on the student's computer |
| When you'd choose it | You're migrating a school onto M365 from elsewhere | A student is leaving and wants their work |
| Cost | Bundled with Microsoft 365 admin | £1.20 per leaver / 60-day window, paid by the school |
Where each tool wins
Migration Manager is the right answer if you're an IT admin moving content from Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, on-prem file shares or another M365 tenant into your tenant. It has parallelism, scheduling, retries, and an admin-grade UI for the kind of bulk move where you need observability across thousands of files at once.
mydocs.school is the right answer if you're a student who's about to lose access to their school account and wants to take a copy of their own work. Or if you're an IT admin who wants to give every student in your tenant that ability without driving each export yourself.
What changed when Mover.io retired
Until 31 October 2024, Mover.io was the self-service complement to Migration Manager — admins used Migration Manager for bulk moves, students used Mover for individual exports. Microsoft retired the self-service Mover.io workflow and folded the admin-led functionality into Migration Manager. The student workflow disappeared with it.
mydocs.school fills the specific gap Mover left behind. More on that on the Mover.io alternative page.
Common questions
- What is Microsoft SharePoint Migration Manager?
- An admin tool inside the Microsoft 365 admin centre for moving content from external sources (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, on-prem file shares) into Microsoft 365 — typically SharePoint or OneDrive. Drives bulk tenant-to-tenant or external-to-tenant migrations. Requires the Migration Admin role.
- Why isn't it for students?
- Migration Manager runs in the M365 admin centre and needs tenant-admin privileges. A student doesn't have those and can't get them. The tool is also designed for bulk content imports, not for per-user self-service exports.
- Could the school IT team drive Migration Manager for each leaver?
- Theoretically yes, practically rarely. Each per-student export needs admin time to set up. At cohort scale (50+ leavers) this becomes a meaningful workload on IT, and the tool's output isn't well-suited to handing back to the individual student.