RecoveryTools · Secure SharePoint backup software for IT administrators
Back up SharePoint Online sites and subsites to local storage or a network drive you control. Documents, versions, permissions and metadata land on your own disk, on a schedule you set.
No credit card, no sign-up. Run a real backup tonight, open the folder tomorrow.
Screenshot of an export to file system
Every question about SharePoint online backup solutions starts here, and it is why backing up is essential. The honest answer has three parts, and only one of them is the one people expect.
Platform uptime and geo-redundant storage. A recycle bin holding deleted items for 93 days across both stages. Versioning on documents. Retention policies, legal hold and the Preservation Hold library for compliance. Microsoft also takes its own copies roughly every 12 hours and keeps them about 14 days, and sells a paid backup add-on separately on top of that.
Microsoft support can bring back whole site collections, not the single file an employee deleted, and they have to run it for you. Granular recovery does exist now, but only in a paid add-on billed per recoverable gigabyte every month. The recycle bins sit inside the very site they protect, so ransomware or a compromised administrator empties both. After 93 days the item is gone, and replication copies a deletion as faithfully as it copies a file.
Your own copy on hardware you own, outside SharePoint, written as browsable folders and files you can open without a licence. Retention is whatever your disk allows rather than 93 days. Accidental deletion, human error, a malicious insider, a sync error that removed files nobody noticed, a departed employee whose licence lapsed and an organisation that no longer exists all stop being a data loss problem.
Both layers are worth having. Retention covers this morning. A copy you hold covers the month nobody noticed and the audit that asks for 2019.
IT administrators, consultants and enterprise-grade IT teams who hold Microsoft Partner status run this SharePoint backup tool for organizations and businesses every night, department by department, so full data protection across departments and departmental documents never depends on one person remembering. Diversified data protection is what keeps business continuity and productivity intact. They keep coming back for reasons you will recognise: the backup lands where they expect it, and every run leaves the report they hand to the client.
Read partner storiesThe Export Job, Screen By Screen
Paste a SharePoint Online site URL and sign in with interactive OAuth 2.0. Test connection confirms SharePoint answers before you go any further. Discover sites pulls every site it can reach into a list where everything is ticked by default, so you untick what you want to leave out.
Point it at any folder. Documents come down with the folder structure intact, alongside a metadata sidecar in CSV or JSON. Tick the versions box and every version is written into a _versions subfolder rather than flattened into the latest copy.
One screen holds every decision about fidelity and volume. Name the extensions you want or the ones you do not. Decide whether versions come down. Keep permissions as they are, broken inheritance included, and hold on to who created each file and when. Incremental is a checkbox here, not a separate mode.
Backup only counts if it happens without you. Name the task, pick daily or another frequency, set the hour and the start date. The job runs at that time whether or not the app is open. Sign in once through Test connection and scheduled runs stop asking again.
Watch the Already backed up counter, because that is the incremental pass showing its work. Below the totals sit the throughput, a running ETA and a log naming each folder and file as it lands. Stop is always available.
Every run ends with a report rather than a shrug. Totals across every outcome, from what copied cleanly to what was skipped or failed, plus the volume of data written. Under that, the per-item table naming each folder and file with its type, status and any detail. That table is the evidence you keep for the compliance file.
Any SharePoint document backup that is only the files is half a backup. Shared documents, site assets and templates come down in their original file formats, and everything that gives a document meaning comes down too, readable a year later.
Lists, site pages, views and site settings belong to a SharePoint to SharePoint move rather than file system export. Exports are about documents. If you need whole sites standing up somewhere else, that is a job for the SharePoint Migration Tool, which is in the same installer.
SharePoint backup software key features earn their keep after year one. The first run is easy. It is the second year, the growing disk and the night nobody watched that decide whether the tool was worth paying for.
Point the SharePoint backup tool at your sites with a read-only scan before you size anything. It reports how much of your storage quota is cold data nobody has touched in years, so you know what is worth copying and what is not.
Filter and backup documents by date range on file creation date or modification date, a file filter to include these types or exclude these types by extension, a maximum file size, a sub-site filter and a user filter. Skip video files, leave the installers where they are.
Keep every past version when legal regulations and compliance or litigation ask for it, or leave the box unticked and take only the current copy. Long-term archiving costs only disk, and the difference in volume between those two choices is usually large.
Delta backup copies only new or updated files and will skip previously downloaded documents, so you avoid duplicate downloads. Already backed up gets its own counter and failed items get a retry, so you see the saving rather than take it on faith.
Four throttle-aware workers by default, tunable per backup job. Simultaneously backup multiple sites: up to three jobs run at once with bulk site collections in one pass, and the app warns you if two would overlap or the bad item count climbs.
This SharePoint backup tool runs automated backups daily, weekly and monthly at an hour you choose, with the application closed. A backup that depends on somebody remembering is not a backup. The software is what removes the remembering.
Secure Microsoft authentication through OAuth 2.0 and an Azure app registration leaves your MFA and conditional access policy in charge, and no password is kept on the machine. Data stays with you, with no access granted to third parties and no external cloud storage services.
Local file system, external hard drive, SSD, network-attached storage or mapped network drive by UNC path, any of them works. Select backup destination once and store your backups locally as offline backup copies on hardware you control.
Real-time counters and a live log while it runs, then a summary report and a detailed report with file-level backup results, backup status, source name and any errors. That report is what you hand over for auditing when a regulator asks.
One Engine Behind Every Job
Four jobs sit on one sidebar and share one scheduler, one log and one report format. Learn the SharePoint backup and recovery screen and you already know the other three.
What You Get To Control
One site URL, or discover everything available and tick the sites worth copying.
Name the extensions to include or exclude, so the run never downloads what you do not want.
Column values, author and the original dates travel in a sidecar file beside the content.
Every version into a _versions subfolder, or just the current copy when disk matters more.
SharePoint Online throttles heavy callers, so the thread count is how you stay under it and keep backups from slowing SharePoint in working hours.
Halted runs pick up from where they left off instead of downloading everything again.
Incremental runs skip what is already on disk and count it separately in the report.
Once, daily, weekly or monthly, firing with the app closed. App-only sign-in by client secret or certificate means no prompt, and a Windows notification tells you when a run has finished.
Every run and every schedule on one screen, with counts, sizes and the last result.
Each folder and file named as it is written, with the source and destination stated at the top.
Failed items are named with the reason beside them, so a blocked path or a locked file is obvious without reading the whole log.
HTML report, CSV report and plain-text log per run, kept in your Documents folder. The advanced settings the job used are written into the log, and anything excluded or failed is named with its reason.
Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online backup takes about ten minutes the first time. After that the schedule does it and you read the report.
Install on any Windows machine, nothing goes on the server side. Paste a single SharePoint Online site URL, or run discovery and pick sites and subsites, team sites and communication sites alike, from everything it finds.
Authenticate over OAuth 2.0, then press Test connection. That one sign-in carries every scheduled run that follows.
Run SharePoint Storage Analysis. It is read-only and safe against production, and it tells you how much content there is and how much of it has gone cold.
Browse to a local drive or type a UNC path to a network drive as the destination path. Decide here whether versions come down into a _versions subfolder or not.
File type filters, permissions, metadata, incremental and thread count. Preview shows the selection before anything is written, and a stop button can stop backup mid-run without losing what already landed.
Start it now, or take the backup of SharePoint site periodically with a nightly task and leave. Either way it ends with the per-item report you keep for disaster recovery planning and business continuity reviews.
Microsoft's built-in tools, a manual download from the web interface or the OneDrive sync client handle the file somebody deleted this morning. The gap opens on everything past that, from a cloud outage to hardware or server crashes.
Twenty-eight questions to settle before you write the backup policy your auditor will accept. Retention windows, where the copy lives, who can delete it and how often you check that it is still running.
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Before You Install
What Admins Ask Before They Buy
Not in the way most people mean by backup, and there is no built-in option for admins to take one. Microsoft keeps the platform running, replicates it across data centres and holds deleted SharePoint items in the recycle bin for a 93 day retention period on every plan. After the retention period of 93 days the item is purged from the second-stage recycle bin and permanently deleted, regardless of when you notice. Microsoft sells a paid add-on on top of that, no SharePoint backup tool of its own, which is a fair signal that the built-in retention was never meant to be your only copy. An independent SharePoint site backup is your side of the shared responsibility model.
Manually downloading from the web interface or relying on the OneDrive sync client is not a backup, and PowerShell scripts need technical expertise to maintain. Instead, install this third-party SharePoint backup tool on a Windows machine, open Export to File System and paste the site URL to backup SharePoint Online to local storage. Sign in with OAuth 2.0, browse to the folder you want the copy in, set the filters, then start the export. A SharePoint backup here means complete document libraries come down as structured and organized backups, files and folders and subfolders in their original formats, with the original file and folder hierarchy intact and a metadata sidecar alongside. That sidecar will back up metadata such as last modified time and share permissions, preserve file names and folder paths and maintain original created and modified timestamps. No complex methods, no scripts and no technical knowledge needed, so a non-technical operator keeps productivity up.
Yes. Point the SharePoint Online backup at internal storage, a drive plugged in over USB or a network share by its UNC address. There is no cloud storage facility for backup here by design: everything is stored locally. NAS or your own on-premises storage works as long as the machine running the job can reach it. Where that hardware lives is your decision, which is how the copy ends up offsite if you want it to be. If you point it at a protected system location such as Program Files, tick Run with administrator rights on the schedule. An ordinary folder does not need that.
Start with the read-only scan for a size estimate. It ships inside this SharePoint backup tool. It is safe to run against production and it reports the size of what you are about to copy, split by age. Versions change the answer most: turning on full version history can multiply the total several times over, because every version is a separate file on disk. The metadata sidecar is small enough to ignore. That scan is how teams decide what to archive out of SharePoint, which reduces the SharePoint storage bill at the same time as building the copy.
Yes. This SharePoint data backup can be as narrow as one library. Choose document libraries from the discovery list, select multiple libraries at once or back up the document library on its own and download them locally. Leave site discovery alone and the run exports only the single site URL you entered, and the file type filters narrow it further. If you want separate copies per site, point each run at its own folder.
No. The export reads from the source and writes to your folder. Nothing is deleted, moved or rewritten in SharePoint, so there is zero user impact and users keep working without affecting the workflow while it runs. It also means a failed or stopped run is safe to start again.
Yes. SharePoint automatic backup is built in: the backup scheduling option sits on the Options step. Give the task its name, choose how often it should repeat, then set the time and first date. From then on it fires with the application shut. Because the sign-in is remembered, nothing stops to ask for credentials. Nightly is the usual answer to how often a SharePoint backup should run, because incremental runs make the second and every later run far cheaper than the first, so a daily job costs little more than a weekly one.
With Incremental ticked the SharePoint Online backup keeps one folder current: new and changed items are written, and anything already on disk is counted under Already backed up rather than copied again. For separate copies side by side, give each run its own export folder. The folder is yours, so how many you keep and for how long is your call.
Licensing is 99 US dollars per machine on an annual term, with a 30 days money-back guarantee and 24x7 technical support by live chat, 24/7 in every time zone. In the free trial version of the SharePoint backup tool every feature is unlocked and only the copy volume is capped, at 25 items per document library, so you try before you buy. Scheduling, reporting and the read-only scan are not capped, so you can size your real estate before you buy.
This SharePoint backup tool signs in with interactive OAuth 2.0 against SharePoint Online through an app registration you own in Azure, which means your existing sign-in policy governs the job and no credentials sit on the machine to be stolen later. No standing service account is created, so there is nothing extra waiting for your next security review. Everything travels encrypted, no third parties and no external cloud ever hold a copy and privacy is yours to safeguard. The copy is written straight to storage you own and is never held by us, which is the answer your GDPR questionnaire is looking for. Encryption at rest is whatever that disk or share already provides, BitLocker included, because the output is ordinary files rather than a container of our own.
Any Windows machine running .NET 8 with the WebView2 runtime, launched with run as administrator if the destination is a protected folder, an account with read access to the sites you want to copy, somewhere to write the files and outbound access to SharePoint Online through your firewall. Sign-in runs against an app registration in your own Microsoft Entra directory, and its permissions want admin consent once. Global administrator is not required to read content. Setup is the installer and nothing else: no agent goes into SharePoint and nothing is deployed server side.
With any SharePoint backup tool the item count matters far more than the total size, because SharePoint Online throttling is applied per request rather than per gigabyte. A one terabyte estate of small files takes far longer than a one terabyte estate of large ones. Raise the parallel threads for a quiet weekend and lower them during working hours. Users keep working with minimal disruptions and no downtime throughout, and an internet connection is required only on the machine running the job. The first run is the expensive one; after that only new and changed items move, so a delta run finishes in a fraction of the time.
No. This job takes a SharePoint Online site URL, so OneDrive is separate work rather than something that comes along with it. Being straight about the boundary matters here, because a plan that assumed OneDrive was included is the kind of gap nobody finds until the day it is needed.
One file at a time, and there is no console to learn. Complete data recovery from this backup is a folder tree on your disk, so an item-level copy of a deleted file means opening the folder, finding it and copying it back from any of its backed-up versions, regardless of when it was deleted. Version history sits in a _versions subfolder next to it, so an older draft is just as easy to reach. Where whole libraries or site collections have to go back, the SharePoint Restore Tool reads the same folder and puts the structure back for you, which is where this SharePoint online backup software earns its keep.
As far back as you keep the disks, with no changing retention policies to catch you out. Every run is its own recovery point, and because nothing is billed per gigabyte there is no monthly cost pushing you to prune. This is the difference that matters against a pay-as-you-go add-on: its recovery points reach back twelve months and you pay for every recoverable gigabyte, every month, for as long as you want the history. Folders on drives you already own have neither limit.
That is the case backup for SharePoint Online rests on: insurance against accidental deletion and ransomware attacks alike, so you protect yourself and your business from data loss. Malware, cyber threats, cyber breaches, data corruption, a hardware crash or server crash and accidental data loss all hit the same place, and recycle bins, a retention policy and legal holds all live inside the environment they protect, so an attacker with the right rights can clear them. A copy written to a disk you control sits outside that blast radius, which is how you protect and safeguard from ransomware and secure your organization from data loss. Take it further if the data warrants it: copy the folder to media you disconnect afterwards, and nothing online can reach that isolated copy.
Our engineers can look at your sites with you, work out what it takes to back up SharePoint Online at your size and what a first run would actually cost in disk and time, and tell you if this is the wrong software for your case.
Read-only scan and scheduling are not capped in the trial, so you can size your estate and set a nightly job today. The only thing the trial limits is how many items each run copies.
Backup walkthrough · add the video file here