SharePoint End of Life Is Here:
What Actually Breaks
SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 are out of support with no ESU program. Here's what breaks, what the migration tool quietly leaves behind, and what has to be rebuilt.
The date passed, and there is nothing to buy.
If you're still running SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019, you're running it unsupported. Extended support ended on July 14, 2026, and there's no extended security update program to buy your way into. This post covers what that actually costs you, and the four things that will not follow you to SharePoint Online no matter which tool you point at them: InfoPath forms, SharePoint Designer workflows, full-trust code, and workflow history.
Microsoft is blunt about what end of support means: no new security updates, no non-security updates, no assisted support — free or paid — and no updated technical content.
SQL Server 2014
Windows Server 2012 R2
SharePoint Server
There's no contract you can sign that changes your position. SharePoint Designer 2013, InfoPath 2013, Project Server 2016 and 2019, and SQL Server 2016 all reached the same date — if you run a SharePoint farm, you're almost certainly carrying more than one of those.
The risk isn't theoretical. In July 2025, attackers were actively exploiting security flaws in on-premises SharePoint. Microsoft's remediation guidance opened with a single instruction: get onto a supported version, then apply the latest security updates. At the time, supported meant SharePoint Server 2016, 2019, or Subscription Edition. Two of those three are no longer on that list — SharePoint Online was never in scope. If something like that lands again, your farm doesn't get a patch.
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Two ways out
You have two destinations, and the right one is less obvious than most vendors will tell you.
Stay on-prem: Subscription Edition
The upgrade runs by database attach: stand up a new SE farm, copy your content and service application databases across, then attach and upgrade them. Your farm configuration doesn't travel — you rebuild that side by hand.
Two things trip teams up. Every database has to be at version 16.0.4351.1000 or higher, or SE refuses the upgrade outright. And most Search databases can't be attached at all, so the Search service gets re-created from scratch — Word Automation Services and Machine Translation Services need new instances too.
Move to the cloud: SharePoint Online
This is where most farms are heading, and it's where the losses concentrate. The next two sections cover exactly what a migration tool will and won't carry across for you — worth reading in full before you commit a timeline to a client or a leadership team.
Whichever you choose: run this against every content database before you commit to anything.
Test-SPContentDatabaseIt tells you which custom components a database is expecting and can't find. It takes minutes, costs nothing, and almost always surfaces something nobody remembered deploying.
What the migration tool carries, and what it leaves
The SharePoint Migration Tool is free and good at what it does. What it does is narrower than most migration plans assume.
Migrates cleanly
- Files, folders, list items, and the version history you choose to keep
- Standard list types: custom lists, libraries, calendars, tasks, issue tracking, surveys
- Managed metadata, content types, and term stores
- Site navigation and site features on standard sites
- Designer workflows built from common actions
- Modern team and communication sites from SharePoint Server 2019
Must be rebuilt
- InfoPath forms — no conversion tool exists, and the form web part doesn't migrate
- Workflow run history, which SPMT doesn't carry at all
- External lists and every Business Data Connectivity web part
- Full-trust farm solutions and code-based sandbox solutions
- Master pages and custom branding
Microsoft's own description of the tool's scope is a useful reality check: out-of-the-box SharePoint sites that don't use any coding or third-party tools. That's a boundary, not a feature list. Everything past it is a rebuild, and it needs to be budgeted like one.
Wondering what your farm will actually lose in migration?
We'll run Test-SPContentDatabase and a full custom-code inventory before you commit to a destination.
The four with no clean path
Regardless of which destination you choose, these four don't come with you.
InfoPath forms
InfoPath is finished. Forms Services came off SharePoint Online after July 14, 2026, and there's no automated tool to convert your forms into anything else — Microsoft never shipped one.
The part that catches people out is that a migration can look successful here. Your form library will move. The form file and every submitted response land safely on the other side. But nothing is left to display them as a form — you get the data, not a working form.
Rebuild in Power Apps where the logic earns it. Where the original was a five-field request form, Microsoft Forms or a modern list form does the job for less money and less ongoing maintenance. Not every InfoPath form deserves a Power App.
SharePoint Designer workflows
The short version: assess your workflows first, then rebuild the ones that can't convert. Here's why that order saves money.
What breaks
On SharePoint Online, 2013 workflows were removed from existing tenants on April 2, 2026 — anything that survives can be viewed as a file but won't run. On Subscription Edition, 2010 workflows ended with the July 2026 date; 2013 workflows still run through SharePoint Workflow Manager. SharePoint Designer 2013 itself is out of support everywhere as of July 14, 2026.
What migrates
Workflows attached to a list, a library, or a content type. The workflow logic itself, and the list or library it runs against.
What doesn't
Site-level workflows. The run history — who approved what and when. Workflows whose stages loop back on themselves. Around a dozen common actions, including web service calls, loops, parallel blocks, copying documents, waiting on a field to change, collecting data from a user, and setting content approval status.
What to do
Run the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool before you touch the migration tool. It scores every workflow for whether the actions inside it can convert at all — a decision you don't want to make by guessing across a few hundred workflows.
One setting deserves particular attention. When the migration tool meets an action it can't convert, it stops by default and reports an error. A second option converts that action into an empty placeholder instead — choose it and your flow will publish, turn on, and show green in the run history while doing less work than the workflow it replaced. Nobody notices until an approval never reaches anyone.
Full-trust code
Farm solutions have no equivalent in SharePoint Online. Code-based sandbox solutions were deprecated back in 2014, and SharePoint Online finished removing them. Anything built that way — timer jobs, event receivers, custom web parts, provisioning logic — gets rebuilt somewhere else: SharePoint Framework for anything users see, Azure Functions and Microsoft Graph for back-end work, Power Automate for process logic.
This is where Subscription Edition earns its place. SE still accepts full-trust solutions — if your farm is carrying years of custom-built solutions and the original source code still exists, staying on-prem may genuinely cost less than rebuilding everything. That's a legitimate answer, not an excuse.
Workflow history
Your workflows can migrate. Their history can't. The migration tool doesn't carry workflow history — the workflow moves, the list it runs against moves, but the record of who approved what, on what date, with what comment, stays behind. Anything part-way through doesn't resume on the other side either.
If that trail is your audit evidence, export it before the old farm is switched off. A CSV or a plain archive list is unglamorous and completely sufficient. Once the farm is gone, there's nothing to go back to.
Four things that surface after the plan is signed off
The assessment tool may not cover your version. Microsoft's current documentation describes the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool as scanning a SharePoint Server 2013 farm; older documentation covered 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you're on 2016 or 2019, build your discovery around the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool and Test-SPContentDatabase rather than assuming a single scan has you covered.
A tenant setting quietly blocks web parts. Some supported web parts won't migrate unless custom script is allowed on personal sites and self-service created sites, and that change can take up to 24 hours to take effect. Turn it on before your first migration wave, not the morning of it.
Add-ins broke in the cloud, but not on-prem. SharePoint Add-ins stopped working for all tenants on April 2, 2026, including Government Clouds. Add-ins deployed through an on-premises app catalog aren't retired and keep working — remote event receivers registered with a Microsoft Entra application run until July 1, 2027. If your farm leans on add-ins, that changes which destination is cheaper.
Office Online Server is the next date on the calendar. Microsoft has announced end of support effective December 31, 2026. Browser-based document editing in a Subscription Edition farm depends on it, and no on-prem successor has been announced. If you're choosing SE specifically to keep the current experience, price that in now.
The farms that were easy already moved. What's left is the difficult residue: the form nobody documented, the workflow one person understood, the custom solution nobody can find the source code for. That's the actual work. Not the file copy.
WME runs assessments that inventory exactly this before anyone commits to a destination.
What the assessment covers
Every custom form, workflow and solution your farm is actually running — not what the architecture diagram says
Test-SPContentDatabase results interpreted against your real environment
A Subscription Edition vs. SharePoint Online recommendation, priced separately from the rebuild
No pricing quoted until we know what you're carrying.
