As of July 2026, every SharePoint Alert configured across your tenant will stop delivering notifications. Microsoft has published a firm retirement timeline for the classic SharePoint Alerts feature, the built-in email subscription system that has been part of SharePoint since its early on-premises versions. With roughly two months until the cutoff, this is the time to audit what is active in your tenant and move to a supported alternative before users start filing tickets about missing notifications.
What are SharePoint Alerts?
SharePoint Alerts are per-user subscriptions that send an email or SMS notification when a file, list item, or folder changes in a SharePoint document library or list. Users set them up through the "Alert Me" option on any list or library, choosing the type of change to track and the notification frequency: immediate, daily digest, or weekly digest.
Microsoft is retiring the feature as part of a broader modernisation effort. The company's position is that SharePoint Rules and Power Automate provide better control, more flexibility, and a more sustainable technical foundation for tenant notifications going forward.
The retirement timeline
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| July 2025 | New alert creation gradually disabled for newly onboarded tenants |
| October 2025 | Existing alerts begin expiring after 30 days; users can individually self-extend each alert |
| January 2026 | New alert creation blocked for all existing tenants |
| July 2026 | All remaining alerts stop functioning; the feature is fully removed from SharePoint Online |
Source: Microsoft Support - SharePoint Alerts Retirement
What stops working in July 2026
After the cutoff, users will no longer receive any notifications set up through the classic SharePoint Alerts interface. This includes:
- Immediate alerts triggered by file or item changes within a library or list
- Daily and weekly digest emails that summarise recent changes across a library
- Alerts scoped to specific list views rather than the full list
- Alerts configured to notify when someone else modifies an item the user owns or tracks
Browser-based SharePoint access, co-authoring in Office applications, and Power Automate flows built independently of the alerts framework are not affected by this retirement.
The recommended replacements
Microsoft recommends two paths depending on the complexity of each notification scenario:
- SharePoint Rules: for simple, single-condition notifications on lists and libraries. Rules are configured directly in the SharePoint interface, require no Power Automate licence, and handle the most common alert use cases: notify when an item is added, modified, or deleted. Site owners can configure them without admin involvement.
- Power Automate: for anything conditional or multi-step. The SharePoint Online connector in Power Automate includes triggers for item changes, file modifications, and folder events. Flows can route notifications to a Teams channel, send emails to a group address, or trigger approval processes. Microsoft provides ready-to-use templates that replicate the most common classic alert scenarios, which reduces the rebuild effort for standard cases.
The practical split for most organisations: use SharePoint Rules to replace straightforward library-change alerts with minimal configuration overhead, and use Power Automate for anything that previously sent to a group address, required conditional logic, or targeted changes made by a specific user.
How to audit existing alerts before the deadline
Classic SharePoint Alerts are set per user per list. There is no centralised admin console that surfaces all active alerts across a tenant in one view. Two practical approaches for an audit:
- Microsoft 365 Assessment Tool: Microsoft's tenant scanning tool can identify alert usage across sites and generate a usage report. This is the most practical starting point for tenants with many site collections.
- PnP PowerShell: The
Get-PnPAlertcommand retrieves all alerts for a given site or user. Scripting a loop across all site collections produces a complete inventory for environments where PowerShell access is available.
Start with libraries and lists where notification failures would cause the most disruption: document libraries used by compliance or legal teams, project tracking lists used across departments, and shared calendars or task lists where change notifications are embedded in an established workflow. For a broader view of which sites and libraries in your tenant carry the most active content, Report Master generates Excel-based storage and activity reports that help prioritise where to focus the alert migration effort.
For a related checklist on auditing who has access to those same libraries, see the guide on how to audit SharePoint permissions across your tenant.
Frequently Asked Questions
When do SharePoint Alerts stop working?
Microsoft will fully retire SharePoint Alerts in July 2026. All existing alerts will stop functioning on that date, regardless of whether users have individually extended them since October 2025.
What replaces SharePoint Alerts?
Microsoft recommends SharePoint Rules for simple, single-condition notifications and Power Automate for conditional or multi-step scenarios. Both are available within Microsoft 365; Power Automate flows beyond the included tier require a Power Automate licence.
How do I find all SharePoint Alerts active in my tenant?
Use the Microsoft 365 Assessment Tool for a broad tenant-wide scan, or PnP PowerShell's Get-PnPAlert command to enumerate alerts site by site. There is no single built-in admin view that consolidates all alerts across a tenant in one report.