Transform Classic SharePoint Pages To Modern Look And Feel

Nanddeep Nachan

7y79.6k9100Article

SharePoint SharePoint OnlineModern SharePoint Transformation

9 Comments

Join the conversation! Your thoughts help the community grow.

B Reddy3y ago
Can we migrate classic site page to modern communication site using powershell
Arjit Soni5y ago
@NanddeepNachan Please help to get this through.
- Nanddeep Nachan5y ago
  Please see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/transform/modernize-userinterface-site-pages-powershell
Arjit Soni5y ago
Hi , please provide the approach to convert pages from On Prem 2013 to SharePoint Online Modern UI. I didnt get any reference for that anywhere. Could you please suggest some work around?
Mico G.5y ago
Hi, I tried this on a newly created classic site collection (test site) and it worked. But when I try on our existing classic site (currently root site), this command: ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage -Identity Home.aspx -AddPageAcceptBanner" ran into an error ----> ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage : The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.At line:1 char:1+ ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage -Identity Home.aspx -AddPageAcceptBanner+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : WriteError: (:) [ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage], WebException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : EXCEPTION,PnP.PowerShell.Commands.ClientSidePages.ConvertToClientSidePage
Allan Samuel6y ago
The solution works Only on SharePoint online and is not viable for On Prem, Kindly specify that in the article. I had to learn the hard way.
Aswathy Santhosh7y ago
Hi I tried to run this solution, but it is not working for some home page sites. It is throwing "index out of range" exception. I have some list webparts in my home page sites.
- Nanddeep Nachan7y ago
  Try to analyze all the web parts on your classic site and see if they are available as first party web parts on Modern SharePoint.
Rushi Mehta7y ago
Nice Article

Overview

We have been using Classic SharePoint for many years. The Classic SharePoint offers nice wiki and web part pages to represent our information. Microsoft is rolling new updates to SharePoint Online on a frequent basis. At this time, we are living in two worlds of SharePoint - Classic SharePoint and Modern SharePoint. We are developing newer sites with Modern SharePoint and maintaining our old Classic SharePoint sites. It is not an easy task to convert all our Classic SharePoint sites to Modern sites. It needs to undergo a massive thought process.

The good news is Office PnP has come with an approach to help migrate our classic SharePoint pages to new modern look and feel.

In this article, we will explore how we can transform our classic SharePoint pages to the new modern look and feel.

Classic Pages vs Modern Pages

Classic Pages

Classic SharePoint offered Wiki pages and web part pages. They had a predefined placeholder to add our content to SharePoint. In a few situations, we had to adjust with a close matching layout of the page.

Transform Classic SharePoint Pages to Modern Look and Feel

Modern Pages

Modern pages, on the other hand, offer a very dynamic layout. We can add as many sections as we need to align our content nicely.

Transform Classic Pages to Modern Pages

So far, we have developed a huge number of classic SharePoint sites. Can we get all those to Modern easily? The answer is Yes! We can perform an in-place upgrade using OfficeDev PnP solution. Modernizing the site involves the below steps.

Maximize the use of the modern list and library experience
Connect your site to Office 365 group
Transform your wiki and web part pages to modern pages
Rebuild your classic publishing portals to modern portals

Modernize the page

Page modernization is done by,

Transforming classic wiki or web part page to modern client-side page.
Page structure (e.g. header with 2 columns) is kept, wiki HTML is transformed into HTML that works on modern pages.
Web parts on the page are replaced with modern 1st party web parts

The modern page is generated as a preview. The old page is kept as it is.

Modernize pages using PnP PowerShell

Install PnP PowerShell

On Windows PowerShell, use below commands.

SharePoint Online	Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline
SharePoint 2016	Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2016
SharePoint 2013	Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2013

If needed, install PowerShellGet from here.

Use the below PowerShell code to transform the page into Modern.

# Connect to the classic site with pages to modernize
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/teamsite
# Modernize page1.aspx and add the page keep/discard banner on the page
ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage -Identity page1.aspx -AddPageAcceptBanner

Once the page is transformed, navigate to the Site Pages library. You will see Migrated_Home.aspx is created as a transformed modern version of the classic page.

Let us open the page and compare side by side.

Classic Page look and feel

The above classic web part page looks like this after it is transformed into the Modern client-side page.

There are a few things to notice -

Web parts on the Classic page are replaced with modern 1st party web parts.
Web parts not supported in the Modern SharePoint are not migrated.

Configure Banner

A banner like below will be shown on the classic page.

Follow the below steps if you do not see the banner web part on the Classic page.

Download the banner web part solution (sharepointpnp-pagetransformation-client.sppkg) from the sp-dev-modernization repository here.
Add it to your SharePoint tenant app catalog.
Select “Make this solution available to all sites in the organization”.
Click "Deploy".

Use the below code to transform all Classic pages into the Modern pages.

# Connect to the web holding the pages to modernize
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/modernizationme
# Get all the pages in the site pages library
$pages = Get-PnPListItem -List sitepages
# Iterate over the pages
foreach($page in $pages)
{
# Optionally filter the pages you want to modernize
if ($page.FieldValues["FileLeafRef"].StartsWith(("t")))
{
# No need to convert modern pages again
if ($page.FieldValues["ClientSideApplicationId"] -eq "b6917cb1-93a0-4b97-a84d-7cf49975d4ec" )
{
Write-Host `Page $page.FieldValues["FileLeafRef"] is modern, no need to modernize it again`
}
else
{
# Create a modern version of this page
Write-Host `Modernizing $page.FieldValues["FileLeafRef"]...`
$modernPage = ConvertTo-PnPClientSidePage -Identity $page.FieldValues["FileLeafRef"] -Overwrite
Write-Host "Done" -ForegroundColor Green
}
}
}

Summary

Transforming Classic SharePoint sites to Modern can be made easy with OfficeDev PnP offerings. However, keep in mind that all functionality will not be migrated as is to the Modern. A few functionalities might need to be rewritten using SharePoint Framework.