Overview

When you link SharePoint, the file picker asks you to choose which sites to sync. If you need to select a large number of sites, upload a CSV of site URLs instead of finding each one in the tree.

Select Bulk select sites at the top of the file picker to start. If your organization has already uploaded a CSV, the button reads Modify bulk selection.

Instructions

Step 1: Prepare your CSV

Your file must meet all of the following:

• A .csv file, uploaded one at a time.

• A column named url (capitalization does not matter; other columns are ignored).

• One site URL per row, with at least one row.

• The full site URL as it appears in SharePoint, for example https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/marketing

• Smaller than 50 MB.

Step 2: Upload the file

Select Bulk select sites, then select Choose CSV or drag the file onto the upload area. To swap the file, select Choose a different CSV; to drop it, select the X next to its name.

Confirm the upload. Which confirm button you see depends on what you have already selected:

• Confirm selections appears when you have selected nothing yet.

• Append to previous selection adds the sites in your file and leaves everything already selected in place.

• Overwrite makes your file the entire selection, removing any site the file leaves out.

Merge then validates the sites in your file against SharePoint. A small file resolves while you wait, and its sites appear in your selections. A larger file continues in the background: your account links, and the screen tells you to close the page and come back in a few hours.

Sites you select through the CSV sit alongside anything you picked by hand in the file tree. Use Add more items to go back to the tree without sending your file.

Merge deletes your uploaded CSV 7 days after you upload it. Your site selections are unaffected.

Error messages

• (file) does not match the required schema. — the CSV has no url column.

• (file) has no site URLs — every row under the url column is empty.

• (file) must be a CSV — the file is not a .csv.

• (file) is too large — the file is 50 MB or larger.

• Upload one CSV at a time — more than one file reached the upload.

• We couldn't process your CSV. Please try again. — Merge failed to store the file. The same file is worth retrying.

Step 3: Review and fix failures

Merge cannot always resolve every URL in a file. Once all of the sites have been validated, a summary appears above your selections showing how many failed and why:

• 403 Permissions denied — the authenticated account cannot see the site. Grant the credential access to the site in SharePoint.

• 404 Not found — SharePoint returned no site for that URL. Check the URL and that the site still exists.

• Other — SharePoint returned something else. Upload the file again, or contact support.

Select Download failure report for a CSV naming every site that failed, with a site_url column and an error column. The report stays available for 5 days after your upload. Once it expires, the summary keeps the counts and the download disappears.

Best practice is to fix failures by uploading a corrected CSV with Append to previous selection, so existing selections stay in place. Sites that resolve on the second attempt drop out of the failure list.

Questions

If you have questions about bulk selecting SharePoint sites, reach out to your CSM or [email protected].