Map Site Templates

When copying a site, a site template must be used to create the site at the destination. The source site templates can be mapped with the available site templates at the destination to allow you to select new templates for your sites.

Prerequisites

• Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator permissions are always recommended.

Index

• How-To
• Default behavior
• Unavailable source site templates
• Unmapped site template

How-To

1. Click Copy.
2. Select the action you want to perform from the Copy menu and connect to a source and a destination.
3. Click  at the top right corner. 
4. Select Site Templates.
5. If multiple languages are available in your SharePoint source and destination sites, select the language in which you want to edit the mappings. Select the Language for both your source and destination.
6. In the right pane, you will find the site templates that are available at the destination.
7. Drag and drop the appropriate destination template.
8. Click Save.

Default behavior

The default mappings are automatically done using the following rules:

1. Site templates with the same template name (identifier) and language will be mapped together.
2. If no template is found, the mapping will be done by title.
3. If there is still no template matching the source template, it will be mapped with a template that has the same template name, but of any language (using English in priority).
4. If there is still no template found, the source template will stay unmapped.

Unavailable source site templates

Some of the source site templates might be marked as unavailable if they are either obsolete or system site templates. These are templates that you would not see when trying to create a new site, but they might still be used by your current sites (if they were created before the template was marked as obsolete). The unavailable templates will be listed at the end of the mappings, and you can map them the same way that you would map other templates.

Unmapped site template

You can select a default site template to use for any source site template that would not be mapped. For example, if you created many custom site templates in your source SharePoint farm, but you don't want to migrate those templates, you can choose to leave them unmapped and set "Blank Site" as the template to use for any unmapped template. All sites using those custom templates will be created at the destination using the "Blank Site" template.

Note: The default site template must be set for each language separately.