How can data from SharePoint 2016 be imported into Confluence?

[Elias Sackmann]

Hello Atlassian Community,

I am looking for advice on importing data and documents from an existing SharePoint 2016 instance into our Confluence environment. Specifically, I’m interested in ways to bring over entire document libraries or lists, including their metadata, into Confluence.

• Has anyone successfully transferred content from SharePoint 2016 to Confluence and can share their experience?
• Are there recommended tools, integrations, or best practices for this process?

Any tips, experiences, or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance for your support.

Best regards, Elias

[Andreas Springer]

Hi @Elias Sackmann

adding to the great points from Barbara and Walter, one aspect I’d look at before you decide on the exact migration tooling is what your target in Confluence should look like.

Coming from SharePoint 2016, it’s tempting to copy libraries and folders 1:1, but Confluence works quite differently.

On Confluence projects we usually recommend to clean up and prioritize as a first step:

➡️ Decide which SharePoint libraries/lists are still relevant and which can be archived instead of migrated.

➡️ Next, redesign the structure. Map libraries/folders to Confluence spaces and page trees so that people can actually find things later, rather than mirroring a deep folder hierarchy.

➡️ Then, plan how to keep your metadata. Important SharePoint columns (e.g. department, status, owner, review date) can become labels or structured page metadata (there are Marketplace apps for that), so you can still filter and report on them in Confluence.

➡️ Last, but definitely not least, review permissions! SharePoint often has very fine-grained access while Confluence is more space-oriented. It’s worth checking which content should stay restricted when you move it.

Once you know “what good should look like” in Confluence, it becomes much easier to decide whether you need a custom script, a small migration toolchain, or a mix of both.

I’m in marketing at Seibert, but I work closely with our team that supports Confluence Cloud migrations and builds custom solutions around metadata and page structures. If you’d like, we can take a look at your current SharePoint libraries and sketch out a target structure + metadata mapping for Confluence, and then see whether a scripted migration would be worth it in your case. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.

Best,
Andreas

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@Elias Sackmann Are you looking to convert the content of files currently stored in your SharePoint into Confluence pages or to simply move all of the files from your SharePoint to be attached to pages in Confluence (i.e., using Confluence as a file storage system), or some combination of these?

In the first case, it would depend on what type of files you have in your SharePoint. You might want to look at these pages:

• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/import-data-from-other-tools-into-confluence/ 
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/import-content-into-confluence-cloud/ 
• List of Marketplace apps resulting from a sharepoint to confluence search: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=sharepoint%20to%20confluence&product=confluence 

In the second case, Confluence is not really designed to act as a file storage system, so you would need to think carefully about how you would want to surface the files to users (the gallery macro is being deprecated - https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Confluence-articles/Deprecating-infrequently-used-macros-in-Confluence-Cloud/ba-p/2981360).

[Elias Sackmann]

Hi Barbara and thank you for your reply.
We would like to convert the files entirely to get rid of SharePoint 2016, so the files would not need to be attached to the page.

I will look further into the links that you provided, thank you very much.

[Alex Mendes_ikuTeam_]

Hi @Elias Sackmann ,

As Barbara mentioned, there are Marketplace apps that help connect SharePoint with Confluence. Here’s how our app, SharePoint Connector for Confluence (Microsoft OneDrive), can support your team: it allows you to use SharePoint as your storage while sharing, previewing, and editing files directly inside Confluence. You also gain file-management capabilities in your Confluence spaces, including full permission controls and configurable settings within the app.

I understand that you’re aiming to move away from SharePoint 2016, but I wanted to share this option in case you need to continue using it for a while longer.

[Klaida_Communardo Products]

Hi @Elias Sackmann 

If you’re looking to bring SharePoint content into Confluence, one option worth exploring is SharePoint Connector for Confluence. It doesn’t perform a one-time import of entire libraries, but it does let you display SharePoint document libraries, files, and lists directly in Confluence pages while keeping the original SharePoint permissions.

This can be useful if you want to surface SharePoint content in Confluence without rebuilding the structure or losing metadata and access controls. It also helps avoid duplication, since the files remain in SharePoint but are accessible from Confluence.

If your goal is a full migration into Confluence storage, you’d still need a manual or custom migration approach, but for many teams the connector is a practical way to make SharePoint content available in Confluence with minimal effort.

Hope this helps!

[Walter Bolick]

If it were up to me, I’d start with a small test migration first. SharePoint → Confluence isn’t a clean one-click process, and it’s easy to lose structure or metadata. A dedicated migration tool can save a lot of headaches, but even then you’ll want to double-check how your libraries look once imported. Better to catch the issues early than redo everything later.

[Elias Sackmann]

That's exactly how we want to approach this situation as well. Our plan is to conduct several test runs, using a sample of around 5-10% of the total dataset, prior to migrating everything to Confluence. 

However, we're still exploring the best method for the migration. So far, we haven't been able to find any tools or Marketplace plugins that address the migration from e.g. SharePoint 2016 to Confluence. At this point, it seems that custom scripting may be the only viable solution for this challenge.