How to change our root site collection from been Team(classic experience) to be a modern communication site

Question

We have a tenant that has its root site collection as Team(classic experience):-

and this site is not currently been used, all the work is been done on other site collection. so i want to change the root site template from been Team(classic experience) to be a modern communication site.. is this possible. also i need to set the root communication site as Hub site later on.

Regards

Answer 1

The root (top-level) site for your organization can't be deleted. If you're a global or SharePoint admin in Microsoft 365, you can replace the root site with a different site.

After replacing the classic root site with a communication site , you can set it as a hub site later.

If your environment was set up before April 2019, you can modernize your root site in three ways:

• If you have a different site that you want to use as your root site (a communication site or modern team site that isn't connected to a Microsoft 365 group), replace (swap) the root site with the other site.
• If you want to keep using the classic team site but add a new modern home page and enable full-width pages with horizontal navigation, enable the communication site experience on the site.
• If you want to continue using the classic team site, enable the modern site pages library experience and set a modern page as the home page of the root site. This gives users a modern team site experience with the left navigation.

More detailed information for your reference:

• Modernize your root site

• How to replace a classic root site in SharePoint Online with a modern site

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Here is a similar case for your reference:

• change our root site collection from been Team(classic experience) to be a modern communication site. can we remove the root and create a modern communication

Answer 2

You can do a site swap. Short answer is that you can configure a new communication site, get it configured the way you want, then in the SP admin center, swap it with the root site to make it become the new root site.

Optionally, you can replace the home page with a full width modern page.

Instructions for this are available here.