How-to-Migrate-a-SharePoint-List-While-Preserving-its-Metadata-Properties...

How to migrate SharePoint list items & documents whilst preserving metadata properties

Preserving Metadata properties is a major concern when migrating SharePoint items using native processes. To ensure that metadata remains consistent through the migration you will need to follow the steps laid out in this article:

1. At the destination, create a blank list. You don’t have to recreate the custom files and list structure in the destination list.

2. Now create a source custom list with a custom field “comments” as shown below:

3. In the source custom list note the time in the modified field (Metadata properties).

4. Go to Site Actions -> Site settings -> click on “Content and structure” under Site Administration.

5. Then open the source custom list and select the items that you want to move.

6. Then in the Move dialog box, select the Destination Custom list in which you want to move your list items and then click OK.

7. Now in the destination list you will see that all items have been moved and custom fields have been created. In the below screenshot you can see that new custom fields are created and the Metadata properties of list items are preserved.

Conclusion

If you’re relying solely on native migration processes, ensuring that metadata properties are preserved during SharePoint migrations is time consuming and repetitive. Fortunately, there are better ways of going about it. Some automated, third-party migration solutions can perform a variety of migrations whilst preserving all metadata and hierarchies. LepideMigrator for Documents is one such solution. It provides a fully customizable mapping of attributes that allows you to automatically migrate the required metadata in a fraction of the time that native processes take.

Specialy thanks to: Peter Gregg (Author for this article)