Brainlitter » How to save an existing site, as a template, to move to another location (with content) and what you need to know

How to save an existing site, as a template, to move to another location (with content) and what you need to know

Ok, this is something that comes along once in a while.

Problem

Site placed in a location the client doesn’t like. While there are better ways (that preserve timestamps, etc.), they are complicated (STSADM) and time consuming (see here for more on STSADM Export/Import – http://brainlitter.com/archive/2009/05/11/how-to-backup-and-restore-migrate-a-single-sub-site-of-a-sharepoint-site-collection-using-stsadm-%e2%80%93o-export-and-import.aspx)

Solution

But if the site is small enough, you can simply ‘save as template’ the site and then create a new site, based on that template.

What You Need to Know

This technique has the following limitations:

  • By default, the site can’t be larger than 10MB, and even if you set the limit higher, I’ve had limited success beyond say 45MB (see here how to increase past 10MB – /archive/2009/05/10/save-sharepoint-list-as-template-with-content-maxes-out-at-10mb-%e2%80%93-but-i-want-more%e2%80%a6.aspx)
    • So, if you have lots of documents, you need to first get them out of the document libraries (Open in Explorer, move to your local machine – then create new site and push them back up)
  • You will lose all versioning
  • You will lose timestamps (everything is created at the time of the ‘new site’)
  • You will lose the ownership (everything is created by the user who did the ‘new site’)

But you know what… it works sometimes, in a pinch. Watch here, how. Video: http://screencast.com/t/NWU5OGEx