SharePoint 2010 – How to move a subsite to a different location
October 20th, 2011 by Chris Shalda | Filed under Microsoft, Microsoft Infrastructure, SharePoint.I had been tasked to reorganize a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site recently. One of the things that I needed to do was to move a couple subsites to be under a different parent site within the same site collection. I researched and was able to find some options, but they all entailed exporting and then importing — or backing up then restoring — the site via command line.
So, I decided to try the export/import method via the command line right on the SharePoint web front end server. To export the site, these are the steps I tried:
- Fire up the command line
CD \”Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN”- Export the old URL using the following Command:
stsadm -o export -url http://intranet/website -filename c:\test\backup.cmp
However, when I tried this under my domain and SharePoint administrator account, I got this error:
“The Web application at http://intranet/website could not be found. Verify that you have typed the URL
correctly. If the URL should be serving existing content, the system administrator may need to add a
new request URL mapping to the intended application.“
After searching a bit on this, it seemed like the problem may have been a permissions issue. So, I confirmed that the administrator account I used had SharePoint Farm Administrative rights, as well as site collection administrative rights. I then tried to run this same command with a designated “SharePoint Administrator” account which also had SharePoint Farm Administrative rights and Site Collection Administrative rights, but then got an Access Denied error.
After spending some time adding and removing rights for both of those accounts to see if I could get this working, I table the issue and moved on to other tasks. One of those tasks was to delete some old subsites from our SharePoint. I ended up stumbling upon the Content and Structure link under Site Administration:
And to my surprise, I found that it is possible to select any site and copy or move it:
- Select the parent site of the subsite you want to move in the left navigation pane
- Check the box next to the subsite that you want to move in the right pane, click the Actions drop-down and click Move…
- Then select the destination of the subsite selected in the next dialog box
This method ended up being a lot more straight forward and quicker than the command line option.
I’m glad I found it!
Will this retain permissions to the sub-site? I’ve seen plenty of ways to accomplish this, export/import, etc, but this looks fairly straight forward. I just need to migrate a sub site http://site/site/sitetomove to say http://site/sitetomove but want to bring over any permissions, etc. Would i be better off using an stsadm command?
@Kriss Tariske
That is a great question. I haven’t tested permission retention specifically, but I know that when I moved a site with this method, the site seemed to retain its permissions. Based on how SharePoint manages permissions, I would think that if there are explicit permissions then those would be retained, otherwise, the default would be that permissions would be inherited from the parent site.
Unfortunately, I can’t find any specific information one way or the other regarding retaining permissions when moving a site with my method or via stsadm.exe. So, if you are able to confirm either way, be sure to let me know if you could.
Thank you – I had been looking for something like this for hours without success!
Thanks – helped me a lot
How did you navigate to the link for the “Content and Structure” under Site Administration? I am an Owner with full permissions. I do not have that link available when I go to site settings from the home page or the subsite.
Can you please detail how you found this link?
You would have to use the “SharePoint Central Administration” web page to start this process. Here are some details on how you would do that and what permissions you would need: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253179(v=vs.100).aspx
What if you want to migrate a subsite collection to a different server?
Adrian, I don’t have much experience with that request specifically, but maybe this site will answer your question or at least lead you in the right direction: http://blog.netnerds.net/2011/03/sharepoint-move-a-subsite-to-another-site-collection/
If you move a sub-site to a new location – I assume that the libraries and webparts associated with it move as well
We use a classification scheme with terms from the term store with each document being assigned to a term – I assume that Manual updating of the classification of each document would be required?
Jim, that is a great question! I have not had to deal with making sure that the metadata migrates successfully in the site move that I did, so I don’t know if I can definitively answer your question.
However, I did find a great article on how to move documents or an entire document library while keeping the metadata intact (as long as you are doing this within the same site collection):
http://blog.henryong.com/2008/01/21/how-to-movemigrate-sharepoint-list-itemsdocuments-and-preserve-metadata-properties-at-the-same-time/
I hope this helps!
- Chris
This is really helpful, except on my organization’s SharePoint (2010), “Content and structure” is not one of the options under “Site Administration.” Do you know why that may be?
Hi Angela!
What edition of SharePoint 2010 are you using? Is it Standard, Enterprise or the “lite” WSS (which is now called SharePoint Foundation)?
I don’t believe this is something you can do with SharePoint 2010 Foundation, but if you do have Standard or Enterprise, you have to activate a couple features to make the Content and Structure visible:
1) Site collection features – Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
2) Site Feature (on the specific site) – Office SharePoint Server Publishing
Here is a website that should guide you in the right direction for activating these features: http://sharepointknowledgebase.blogspot.com/2012/06/sharepoint-2010-manage-content-and.html
I hope this helps!
Thank you for that quick and thorough response! I’ve forwarded that information along to colleagues. Thanks for your help.
Can you please verify something for me? I have a 2007 site, and when I use the Content Manager to move a sub-site from point A to Point B it works great… at least at first glance. If your navigation is set to display Sub-Sites… the original parent site (ie. was just hosting the subsite) shows a link to the sub-site… at its new location. AND it won’t delete. I have to Hide it. Any suggestions?
this way success if you need to move sub site to another location in the same site collection
what about if i need to move it to another site collection ?