SharePoint Alerts stopped working in SharePoint Online from July 2026, and for most people the replacement is a rule on the list or library. Anyone with Contribute permission can create one in about a minute to get an email when a file is added, changed or deleted, or when a date in a column is coming up.
The old alerts had been around for many, many years. Microsoft retired them in stages and put a banner on the alert pages and in alert emails along the way. I recorded the video in September 2025, while that timeline was still ahead, and the rules I set up in it work the same way now.
What was the SharePoint Alerts retirement timeline?
| From | What changed |
|---|---|
| July 2025 | Creating new alerts was gradually turned off for newly onboarding tenants. |
| October 2025 | Alerts started expiring 30 days after their first run. Users could re-enable and extend them 30 days at a time. |
| January 2026 | Creating new alerts was gradually turned off for all tenants. |
| July 2026 | Alerts were removed. Existing alerts can’t be extended and no longer work. |
Microsoft’s SharePoint Alerts retirement page points to two replacements: rules for self-service notifications and Power Automate for anything more involved.
How do you create a rule in a SharePoint library?
Open the list or library, select Integrate, then Rules, then Create a rule. (In my video it sat under Automate. Microsoft’s current instructions use Integrate.) Manage rules shows every rule on the library with a toggle to turn each one on or off.
You start by choosing what triggers the rule. That builds a sentence, and you click each underlined part to fill in the column, the value and who gets the email. When you select Create, the rule is saved and turned on.
Recipients can be me, an email address you type, or any person column on the library. My demo library had Owner and Approved by columns alongside Created by and Modified by, so I could email whoever was named on the file rather than a fixed person.
Which rules replace the alerts people actually used?
Most alerts were some version of “tell me when something’s added, changed or deleted”, and each of those has a matching trigger. The fourth trigger, a date approaching, is something alerts never did.
When a file or metadata is modified. Choose always, or if a column changes. I set: when a file is modified, if Category changes and the new value is anything, send an email to me. You can narrow the new value to a specific value, or use is one of and is not. Besides sending an email, this trigger can copy or move the file, create a translated copy or set a value.
When a new file is added. Again always, or if a column matches. Mine emailed me when a new file was added and the Owner was my demo user, which gives you “tell me when something lands that’s mine”.
When a file is deleted. No conditions here, only who to email.
When a date approaches. This one needs a date column. I set an email 14 days before the Effective date. Review dates and approval dates work the same way. You can only have two of these per list or library, so pick the dates that count.
Rule emails come from no-reply@sharepointonline.com. Tell people that before they start missing notifications in their junk folder.
What can’t rules do that alerts could?
Classic alerts let you choose between an immediate email and a daily or weekly summary, and send text messages. The rule builder in my video had no frequency setting, so every rule sends an email as the change happens. Rules also can’t use a multi-line text column as a condition, and you can’t send to a group email address, only to people or a person column.
For those gaps, Power Automate is the route Microsoft recommends, and the retirement page lists templates for the classic alert scenarios. “Send an email when a SharePoint list item or file is updated” covers changes to an item, “Send an email for changes by others to a SharePoint list item or file” covers someone else changing it, and “Send an email when a new SharePoint file is created” covers new files in a library. A scheduled flow is also how you’d rebuild a daily summary.
Treat the move off alerts as a training job, then fix the columns
- Start with the people who used them. Alerts were personal settings that end users made for themselves, so moving off them is mostly education. Rules are self-service in the same way. Share a short how-to (or the video) with the people who used alerts and let them rebuild the ones they still need.
- Find out who relied on alerts. If you’re an admin, the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool scans the tenant for SharePoint Alerts and produces a Power BI report filterable by site, which tells you where to point the training first.
- Don’t rebuild every alert. Plenty of alerts were “email me when anything changes” on a busy library. Before recreating one, ask whether the person needs an email on every change or only on a specific column or value.
- Put shared notifications on the library. One rule that emails the Owner column when a file changes replaces everyone setting up their own. Whoever owns the library should own that rule.
- Fix the columns. Rules run off metadata. “If Category changes” needs a Category column and “a date approaches” needs a date column, so a library with nothing but folders only gets the always-type rules. If the date only lives inside the document, an autofill column can pull it out into a date column. I haven’t tested a date rule against an autofilled column on video yet, so check it on one library first.
SharePoint folders vs metadata covers why the columns are worth adding, including the review reminders they make possible.
Frequently asked questions
Do SharePoint alerts still work? Not in SharePoint Online. If you’re an admin and want to know who was relying on them, the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool scans the tenant and reports SharePoint Alerts by site in Power BI. The retirement notice is specific to SharePoint Online.
Who can create a rule on a SharePoint list or library? You need Contribute permission on that list or library. If you get an error when creating a rule, ask the owner to share the list or library with you at Contribute level.
What’s the replacement for the “someone else changes an item created by me” alert? Rules don’t have that exact condition. Microsoft’s Power Automate template “Send an email for changes to a SharePoint list item or file created by me” matches it, and you can find it by name in the Power Automate template gallery.
