Forum Discussion

Vivek Jain's avatar
Vivek Jain
Iron Contributor
May 15, 2018

Moving Folders - Content and Structure

Appreciate help for any inbuilt solution in SharePoint Online to move folders and underlying documents from one sub-site to another sub-site within the same collection. We need to preserve the metadata.

 

The "Move" feature within the "Content and Structure" seems to work only at the individual document level and not at the folder level. We have large number of folders and files, doing it one by one would take days.

 

Why would Microsoft not allow the move on folder level, many of users must be spending great deal of time across the world for such a common-sense feature.

 

Thanks for any help.

5 Replies

  • The move to command requires a modern UI view, so you will have to activate that for your site if it's not already on. I'm not 100% sure if you can even use the Move to command to a sub site either thou so that may not be an option. You might have to use the SharePoint migration tool, which should allow you to move documents I think it supports retaining history and creaded/modified metadata as well. If not you'll have to look at 3rd party migration which does provide full history/metadata move over.
    • Hunter Willis's avatar
      Hunter Willis
      Iron Contributor
      There are many third party apps from vendors like AvePont's that provide this functionality and much more for a reasonable cost. There are PS scripts that enable this too if you are able to utilize powershell.
      • Michael Cummins's avatar
        Michael Cummins
        Copper Contributor

        Am I incorrect in observing that the SP Migration tool doesn't support site to site migration?

         

        The "Move To" feature seems to need a lot of babysitting for large migrations.

         

        Do you have any links to the PS scripts that might help?

  • Try OneDrive for Business Move To Action. it'll preserve metadata and version history. Please refer blogpost below for further details

     

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Now-move-files-anywhere-in-Office-365-SharePoint-and-OneDrive/ba-p/146973

     

    For bulk migration and for more speed try

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/migrate-to-sharepoint-online/introducing-the-sharepoint-migration-tool

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/migrate-to-sharepoint-online/how-to-format-your-csv-file-for-data-content-migration

     

     

Resources