Sometimes it's easy to get used to the way things are done in a program  and when the next version comes along we don't even notice that something has been improved. In SharePoint 2003 if you wanted to move a lot files from one document library to another you really had two choices.If you just want to move documents without worrying about versioning or metadata you could use explorer view. (If you landed here using a search engine and you want to know how to use explorer view to do this Shane Young has a good write up on his blog http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2006/01/12/80843.aspx ) If you did have to keep versioning and metadata you needed to hope that you had less than 10MB of data in the library and save it as a template with the in "include content" option. (Best link I have offhand for this method is http://wss.collutions.com/Lists/FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=63 ).

In Microsoft Office SharePoint server 2007 there is another way. Both of the previous methods still work, and there is even a way around the 10MB template size limit in MOSS 2007 ( another link? http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/meronf/archive/2006/08/22/2617.aspx), but this method is completely point and click within SharePoint. The key to this new method is the Manage Content Structure option. If you haven't looked at this new feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 fire up your browser and start doing research. Manage Content Structure gives you a lot of freedom to view, delete, copy, and move content as well as normal check out/in and publish options.

For our purposes the Site Content and Structure page is just going to be a simple way to migrate our files while preserving both versioning and metadata. I have created two document libraries, added a custom column to both that demonstrates metadata, and created multiple versions of one item. Let the screenshots begin!

The "Important" column is a simple yes/no item that defaults to 'yes'. I won't demonstrate it here but if you move the files using the "Open with Windows Explorer" the data in this column would be lost.

Just to prove I wasn't lying I will show you our versioning information

Now on to the serious business of moving our documents from Where they are to Where I want them to be (Did you notice my super clever library names?).

To get to our Site Content and Structure page we begin at the Site Actions menu and clicking on Site Settings

Then choose Content and structure from the Site Administration column

Once we are in the Site Content and Structure page we can click on the document library we want to move items from

Select each file you want to move and go to the Actions menu

Select Move from the Actions menu

Choose the library you want to move files to and click OK. Remember that while we are moving items to a library in the same site, we could choose any site in the cascading list.

SharePoint will show you that the move is being performed

Once we get back to the Site Content and Structure page our move is done. 

 By clicking on our destination library we can see our contents have moved with our yes/no column data intact. We can check to make sure our versioning data came over from here as we by choosing Version History from the file drop down menu.

Versioning data is intact and our move has been successful! I hope this is call to the Helpdesk has given you a glimpse of the possibilities of this new feature, as well as a quick and easy way to move your files without losing all of your important metadata.

As always feel free to leave any comments or questions or drop me an email at Stephen[the long tailed A we call “at”]sharepoint911.com.

Stephen - SharePoint Help