Copy SharePoint 2010 site from one site collection to another

by Administrator Comments

In this test case I needed to copy (not move) a SharePoint 2010 site with its content from one site collection to another within the same sp2010 farm.

Creating Site Template

save a SharePoint site as a template –  a template will allow you to package a site in to WSP and even include the content however you need to take into consideration the following limitations:

  1. 50 MB site template limit.
  2. the template will not include the following :
    1. Customized permissions
    2. Running workflow instances
    3. List item version history
    4. Workflow tasks associated with running workflows
    5. People/group field values
    6. Taxonomy field values
    7. Publishing pages and publishing sites
    8. My Sites

Option Two:

Backup and Restore the whole site collection

Using PowerShell create your source site backup:

Backup-SPSite -Identity "http://YourSourceSite" -Path "C:\backups\SourceSite_source.bak" -Force -Confirm:$False

Manually create a new site collection within the farm.

Restore-SPSite "http://myspsite:81" -Path C:\backups\myspsite-81.bak -Force -Confirm:$False

 

Export Import sub-site

 

export-spweb -identity http://SourceDomain/SourceSubSite -path \SourceSite_backup.cmp

import-spweb -identity http://TargetDomain/subsite -path \SourceSite_backup.cmp

Both the source and destination Site templates should use the same site template, for example both need to be “team sites”. Note that the CMP format is  actually a CAB file which contains xml and DAT files.

Using Content Structure

Within the same site collection you can use the site setting Content and structure option to copy sites from one location to another, for example is you need to move a sub-site this is deep inside the hierarchy and promote it to higher level. Please note that workflow instances will not be copied since they are rooted within the site collection.