SharePoint Online admin center now supports changing the URL address and display name of a site. If you have created a site with your project name, but later your project changed to another name, you need to rename the site display name and URL address with the new project name. In this blog, we will explore how to rename the site URL address and how to clean up the old URL address.
Note: Before renaming a site address, make sure that you read and understand the effects of changing a site address documented by Microsoft.
Summary
- Steps to rename the Site URL address in SharePoint Online
- How to remove or clean up Old Site URL address
Steps to rename the Site URL address in SharePoint Online
Follow the below steps to change the name and URL address of a site from the SharePoint Online admin center.
- Go to Microsoft 365 admin center, under Admin centers (In left-side navigation), select SharePoint to open the SharePoint admin center.
- In the SharePoint admin center page, on the left-hand side, under Sites, click Active Sites.
- Select the site (check the box) for which you want to update the URL, and click the Edit button on the toolbar.
- On the Site settings page, click the Edit link under the URL section.
- On the Edit URL page, type the new URL name in the site address box.
- Once you entered the new address, the system will validate the new site address and check whether the site address is available or not. If available, you will see the green text “The site address is available“.
- Click the Save button, then you will be asked to confirm “Do you also want to enter a new site name?“, click Yes to change the site name.
- Type the new site name and click the Save button to complete the changes.
- Now you can confirm the new site URL is updated successfully.
How to remove or clean up Old Site URL address
When you change a site URL to a new address, SharePoint automatically creates redirects (a site with a special template) with the old site address to ensure the links pointing to the old URL continue to work. These redirects are sites that use a special site template at the prior site URL. Please check out this post for more details.
Since the old site URL is used in the special redirect site, you can’t use this old URL in a new site or existing site. You need to delete or free up the old URL to use it on another site.
Install and Connect SharePoint Online PowerShell Module, then run the following command to delete the redirect site which uses the old site URL address.
Remove-SPOSite -Identity "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/OldSiteName"