Considerations and Limitations

When planning for the recovery of Microsoft SharePoint application items, pay attention to the following considerations and limitations:

• Status Recovery Limitations
• Restoring List Items
• Restoring List Items with Link Attachments
• Restoring Surveys
• Restoring Sites
• Data Type Limitations
• Workflow-related Considerations

Status Recovery Limitations

Consider the following when planning for the recovery of the documents/list items:

• If a document/item was in Check Out state when the backup was created, item's last version will not be restored to the target SharePoint but will be available for viewing only; previous versions (if any) will be restored.  

• If Declare this item as a record action was originally applied to list item, the corresponding status will not be preserved; instead, restored item status will be set in accordance with the target list/library content approval workflow.
• Original status On Hold will not be restored

Restoring Documents, Libraries and Lists

• Restore of custom document libraries and lists is not supported.
• Versioning settings of SharePoint lists are not preserved on restore.
• Restoring Generic List and Pages Library may fail with the “No content type 'XXX' found in web YYY” error.
• Modified By field of restored documents is updated with the account performing restore.
• Some Rating Settings of Discussion lists values are not restored.

Restoring List Items

Consider that when restoring a list item, Veeam Explorer works in the following way:

1. Deletes an existing item
2. Creates item's latest version anew using data from the backup.
3. Checks whether it is declared as a record.
4. If the check is a success, the process finishes.
5. If not, the created version is deleted, and item versions are restored sequentially.

This logic leads to several peculiarities of list item restore, as described below.

If a list or list item(s) column is used as a lookup column in the dependent list, consider that restoring an item from the source list causes corresponding item(s) deletion in the dependent list.

If a lookup column in the dependent list has the enforced relationship behavior set to Cascade Delete, then restoring an item from the source list may cause item deletion in the dependent list - due to Microsoft implementation described at https://support.office.com/en-au/article/Create-list-relationships-by-using-unique-and-lookup-columns-80a3e0a6-8016-41fb-ad09-8bf16d490632

To prevent this issue, it is recommended to turn off enforced relationship behavior. As a work-around, you can roll-back the SharePoint database using Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server (as described in the corresponding section of this guide), or roll-back the whole SharePoint server VM to the desired state using any Veeam Backup & Replication recovery option.

Also, the following limitations should be considered:

• If a lookup column in the dependent list has the enforced relationship behavior set to Restrict Delete, then item restore with Veeam Explorer will fail.
• If an .ASPX page references an item using ItemID, this reference may fail to restore (as the item will be created anew with a different ItemID).
• If a list item cannot be deleted (for example, site's "Welcome" page), consider that restore process will recover all versions of the item sequentially without deletions, adding them to Version History.
• Restored Issue list items are assigned new Issue ID.
• Restore of Time Card list is not supported.

Restoring List Items with Links (Attachments)

Consider the following when planning for the recovery of list items with links (attachments):

• If the retention policy for target list/document library was configured to Declare record automatically, only the last version of the item will be restored to target list/library. Target retention policy settings will be applied to restored item (Declare record). However, links (attachments) will not be restored.
• Alternatively (with different retention policy settings), all versions of the original item will be restored to target list/library; item links (attachments) will be restored only if such item does not exist on target SharePoint.
• If Declare this item as a record action was originally applied to list item, such item will not be restored.

Restoring Surveys

Consider the following limitations when planning for the recovery of surveys, survey questions and responses:

• Survey item(s) can be restored to a new survey, created automatically by Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint in the specified destination instead of the previously deleted survey. However, if a new survey is created by user from scratch (not replacing a deleted one) – items cannot be recovered to such a survey.
• A survey can be restored to an existing target survey only if that target survey includes at least one item (question) same as survey questions stored in the content database.
• If a survey question was not answered completely in the source survey, after restore the response status in the target survey will be set to Completed, anyway.
• When restoring a single response to a survey, target response item with the same number will be deleted, and restored item will be placed in the target survey after the last numbered response.
  For example, if the target survey has responses #1-15, and you try to restore a response that used to be #6 on source – then target response #6 will be deleted, and restored response will be assigned #16.

Restoring Sites

1. If you plan to restore SharePoint site pages, consider that Veeam Explorer does not support recovery of items which are not stored in the SharePoint content database (in particular, pages, page references and items based on default templates). Such items cannot be restored (neither by Restore nor by Save menu option), except for data from Wiki Content (text and images) which is stored in the database.  Thus, site pages containing only text and/or images can be restored and displayed properly; other data (Web Parts, App Parts, etc.) cannot be restored and will not appear in the site pages after recovery.

2. Web features restore is not supported for SharePoint 2010 sites.
3. Restore of site navigation is not supported in the current version.

Export

• Importing Picture Library export may result in IDs changed for some items.
• Importing Project Tasks list export does not preserve column order.
• Importing SharePoint list export does not preserve Validation Settings.

Data Type Limitations

Consider the column (field) data type when planning for the recovery of your SharePoint libraries/lists:

• If source column (field) data type was set to Lookup, but the referenced list/library was deleted, such columns (fields) will not be restored even if you recover that referenced list. The reason is that if referenced list is deleted, the reference (link) to that list is no longer valid.
• If source column (field) data type was set to Managed Metadata, such columns (fields) will not be restored.

Workflow-related Considerations

You may need to restore the item(s) originally belonging to a list with no content approval required, to another list. If you try to restore such item(s) to a list that requires content approval, item version and status will be modified in the following way:

1. If a target list is configured to include major versions only – then all versions of restored item will become major (despite the original versioning); item status will be set to Pending.
2. If a target list is configured to include both major and minor versions – then all versions of restored item will become minor (despite the original versioning); item status will be set as follows:

• If the last version (original) was major – status will be set to Pending
• If the last version was minor – status will be set to Draft

Also, consider the following when planning for the recovery of list items (with or without content approval originally required):

1. If the retention policy for target list/document library is configured to Declare record automatically, only the last version of the item will be restored to target list/library. Target retention policy settings will be applied to restored item (Declare record).
   Besides, if Require content approval for submitted items was enabled for the original list, then after recovery item status will be set to Pending.
2. Alternatively (with different retention policy settings), all versions of the original item will be restored to target list/library.
   Besides, if Require content approval for submitted items was enabled for the original list, then after recovery item status in the content approval workflow will be also restored, except for the states listed (see "Status Recovery Limitations" above).