What items can be backed up?

You can back up SharePoint classic site collections, group (modern team) sites, and communication sites. Also, you can select individual subsites, lists, and libraries for backup.

The following items are skipped during a backup:

• The Look and Feel site settings (except for Title, description, and logo).
• Site page comments and page comments settings (comments On/Off).
• The Site features site settings.
• Web part pages and web parts embedded in the wiki pages (due to SharePoint Online API limitations).
• Checked out files—files that are manually checked out for editing and all files that are created or uploaded in libraries, for which the option Require Check Out was enabled. To backup these files, first check them in.
• OneNote files (due to SharePoint Online API limitations).
• External data and Managed Metadata types of columns.
• The default site collection "domain-my.sharepoint.com". This is a collection where all of the organization users’ OneDrive files reside.
• The contents of the recycle bin.

Limitations

• Titles and descriptions of sites/subsites/lists/columns are truncated during a backup if the title/description size is greater than 10000 bytes.
• You cannot back up previous versions of files created in SharePoint Online. Only the latest versions of the files are protected.
• You cannot back up the Preservation Hold library.
• You cannot back up sites created in the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), the predecessor of Microsoft 365.
• You cannot back up the settings for sites that use the managed path /portals (for example, https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/portals/...).
• Information Rights Management (IRM) settings of a list or a library can be recovered only if IRM is enabled in the target Microsoft 365 organization.

What items can be recovered?

The following items can be recovered from a site backup:

• Entire site
• Subsites
• Lists
• List items
• Document libraries
• Documents
• List item attachments
• Site pages and wiki pages

You can use search to locate the items.

Items can be recovered to the original or a non-original site. The path to a recovered item is the same as the original one. If the path does not exist, it is created.

You can choose whether to recover the sharing permissions or let the items inherit the permissions from the parent object after the recovery.

What items cannot be recovered?

• Subsites based on the Visio Process Repository template.
• Lists of the following types: Survey list, Task list, Picture library, Links, Calendar, Discussion Board, External, and Import Spreadsheet.
• Lists for which multiple content types are enabled.

Backing up SharePoint Online data

1. Click Microsoft 365.
2. If multiple Microsoft 365 organizations were added to the Cyber Protection service, select the organization whose users' data you want to back up. Otherwise, skip this step.

3. Do one of the following:

   • To back up all classic SharePoint sites in the organization, including sites that will be created in the future, expand the Site collections node, select All site collections, and then click Group backup.
   • 
     
     • Please note all future created sites will be included in this Group Backup and will consume subscribed seats quota. Current version of backup design does not support exclusion of specific site from being backup on Group Backup Plan once created. 
     • If you wish to backup only specific site, create individual site backup plan and apply to those needed 
   • 
     
   • To back up individual classic sites, expand the Site collections node, select All site collections, select the sites that you want to back up, and then click Backup.
   • To back up all group (modern team) sites, including sites that will be created in the future, expand the Groups node, select All groups, and then click Group backup.
   • To back up individual group (modern team) sites, expand the Groups node, select All groups, select the groups whose sites you want to back up, and then click Backup.

4. On the protection plan panel:

   • Ensure that the SharePoint sites item is selected in What to back up.

   • In Items to back up, do one of the following:

     • Keep the default setting [All] (all items of the selected sites).

     • Specify the subsites, lists, and libraries to back up by adding their names or paths.

       To back up a subsite or a top-level site list/library, specify its display name in the following format: /display name/**

       To back up a subsite list/library, specify its display name in the following format: /subsite display name/list display name/**

       The display names of subsites, lists, and libraries are shown on the Site contents page of a SharePoint site or subsite.

     • Specify the subsites to back up by browsing.

       The Browse link is available only when creating a protection plan for a single site.

   • [Optional] In Items to back up, click Show exclusions to specify the subsites, lists, and libraries to skip during the backup.

     Item exclusions override the item selection; i.e. if you specify the same subsite in both fields, this subsite will be skipped during a backup.

   • [Optional] If you want to encrypt your backup, enable the Encryption switch, and then set your password and select the encryption algorithm. Please safe keep the encrypt key, if it is lost, there is no way to recover them even from Exabytes.

Recovering SharePoint Online data

1. Click Microsoft 365.
2. If multiple Microsoft 365 organizations were added to the Cyber Protection service, select the organization whose backed-up data you want to recover. Otherwise, skip this step.

3. Do one of the following:

   • To recover data from a group (modern team) site, expand the Groups node, select All groups, select the group whose site originally contained the items that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • To recover data from a classic site, expand the Site Collections node, select All site collections, select the site that originally contained the items that you want to recover, and then click Recovery.
   • If the site was deleted, select it in the Cloud applications backups section of the Backup storage tab, and then click Show backups.
     
     You can search groups and sites by name. Wildcards are not supported.

4. Select a recovery point.

   To see only the recovery points that contain SharePoint sites, select SharePoint sites in Filter by content.

5. Click Recover SharePoint files.

6. Browse to the required folder or use search to obtain the list of the required data items.

   The search is not available if the backup is encrypted.

7. Select the items that you want to recover.

   If the backup is not encrypted, you used search, and selected a single item in the search results, you can click Show versions to select the item version to recover. You can select any backed-up version, earlier or later than the selected recovery point.

8. If you want to download an item, select the item, click Download, select the location to save the item to, and click Save. Otherwise, skip this step.
9. Click Recover.

10. If multiple Microsoft 365 organizations were added to the Cyber Protection service, click Microsoft 365 organization to view, change, or specify the target organization.

    By default, the original organization is selected. If this organization is no longer registered in the Cyber Protection service, you must specify the target organization.

11. In Recover to site, view, change, or specify the target site.

    By default, the original site is selected. If this site does not exist or a non-original organization is selected, you must specify the target site.

12. Select whether to recover the sharing permissions of the recovered items.
13. Click Start recovery.

14. Select one of the overwriting options:

    • Overwrite existing files
    • Overwrite an existing file if it is older
    • Do not overwrite existing files
15. Click Proceed to confirm your decision.