Copy an Epic with all child work items

[Einar2]

Is it possible to copy an Epic with all child work items - i.e., User stories and tasks in addition to the Features? Reason is that we have several Epics with the same structure of Features with its subitems/child work items > User stories > Tasks. I’m able to utilize “Create copy of work items” at several levels and copy the levels child work items – however I would like to create a template with all levels: Epic > Features > User stories > Tasks. Is that possible, and if so how?

[#2]

Ugh, this is exactly what I came looking for and there's no solution to your post 

We have exactly the same frustration.  Working on implementing a standard way to create work items, so basing everything off copying a template-type Feature with all User Stories and Tasks.  Except the copy work item, including child links, only goes to the next level down.

So far our workaround has been to copy the Feature without child items, then copy the User Stories, with child items, and reparent to the Feature we just copied.  It's clunky and has only led to the line of conversation of "this is easier in Jira"...  Apparently there's an extension to do this, but I didn't find one yet.

Maybe the 'template' functionality can do more?  I haven't done much with it, my thinking is it's only for particular work item layouts and fields etc, not child items.

[#3]

@ilarsen a workaround to this problem is by using the Open in Excel feature of ADO from the Backlog view. Then from there it is easier to copy and paste at a massive scale. Then publish to ADO so the changes can happen. 

note: open in excel requires installing an official excel add-on for ADO

[#4]

XLS does the job, but it's like using an American pick-up truck as a shopping cart. Just like all smart and creative XLS based solutions, it's almost impossible to explain the "howto" to someone else, especially to bigger audiences with typically low XLS skills. So I'm still voting for a real copy/paste (clone) features that includes child (and child-child and child-child-child....) items. This almost exists: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/2020/sprint-172-update#copy-work-item-t... but this feature only includes first child items (not child of child etc)

[#5]

You can duplicate an epic with a new title by the following steps:
1- Open backlog
2- Open the epic you want to duplicate
3- Click on the three dots on the right upper corner
4- Choose "Create a copy of work item"
5- Check "include child work items"
6- Apply and refresh page

Please note that this only copies one level under the epic.
Let's say you have epic -> feature -> requirement, it will only copy the epic and features inside it, without including the requirements

[#6]

okaaay