Copy Options

Customize your options to fit your migration job.

Index

• How-To
• General options
  • Action to perform
  • Operation mode
  • Configuration
  • List experience
  • Title and URL
• Dependencies
• Metadata
• Filter options
• Automatic export of this reports results

How-To

1. Click Copy.
2. Select the action you want to perform from the menu. 
3. Connect to your source environment. 
4. Select the source target of your migration. 
5. Click Next
6. Connect to your destination environment. 
7. Select the destination target of your migration.
8. Click Next
9. Click  on the top right corner.
10. You will now be on the Copy options screen. 

General options

Action to perform

This option appears when you are performing a Copy Structure - Sites.

• Copy as a subsite of 'your_destination_site' will add the site as a sub-site of the destination site.
  • New title allows you to change the name of the site you are copying.
  • New site address (URL) allows you to change the the URL of the site you are copying.
• Merge with 'your_destination_site' will merge the site with the destination site. If you select the option to merge, all the following will occur on migration:
  • Missing lists and libraries will be added to the target site and existing lists and libraries will be merged.
  • Missing site columns and content types will be added to the target site and existing site columns and content types will be merged.
  • If the option to preserve custom permissions in Configuration is selected, any new permission will be applied on the target site.
  • If the option to preserve workflows in Configuration is selected, missing workflows will be added to the target site.
  • If the option to preserve the site navigation in Configuration is selected, the navigation and Quick Launch settings will be updated.
  • If the option to preserve required features in Configuration is selected, missing site features will be activated on the target site.
  • If the option to preserve subsites in Configuration is selected, missing subsites will be added and existing subsites will be merged.

Operation mode

Automatic (default): You will not be prompted in any situation. You can select one of the following options for items that already exist at the destination:

• Copy and replace them (default): Replaces items at the destination which have the same name.
• Don't copy existing items: Will not copy over items that have the same name as items in the destination.
• Copy and keep both: Copies duplicate items, but automatically renames one as to not cause an error or override.
• Copy if newer (incremental): Replaces a duplicate item only if the date modified is older than the one at the source. Learn More.

Manual: You will be prompted to choose an action when errors or warning occur.

Note: If you have a lot of items, Manual is not recommended.

Configuration

Select which items/properties you would like to preserve from the options available.

Note: You are always migrating the object you selected regardless of your configuration. For example, if you copy a list with Workflows checked under Configuration, the list and list settings are migrated along with your workflows. List content, Custom permissions and everything else left unchecked are not included in the migration.

• List content: All list items, documents, folders and document sets inside the lists and libraries will be copied.
  • Limit to X latest versions : by selecting this and entering the desired number of versions, ShareGate Desktop will copy the X latest version, while always conserving at least one Major version.
• Custom permissions: Custom permissions on lists, libraries and their content will be preserved during the copy. If it is not selected, everything will be set to inherit the permissions from its parent.
• Workflows (Out-of-the-box, SharePoint Designer and Nintex): The workflows associated with the migrated objects will be copied to the destination. The only supported workflows are the built-in SharePoint workflows, the ones created with SharePoint Designer and Nintex Workflows.
• Required features: All the site and site collection features that are required by the elements being copied will be automatically activated.
• Version history: Versions will be preserved.
  • Limit to X latest versions : by selecting this and entering the desired number of versions, ShareGate Desktop will copy the X latest version, while always conserving at least one Major version. Minor versions will be copied as major versions if minor versions are not enabled in the destination list.
• Web parts: The web parts will be copied when copying pages.
• Site navigation: Maintains the links and controls within your sites/site collections which help guide your users towards other relevant locations within your sites.
• Subsites: Includes the subsites of the selected site with the copy.
• Customized list forms: Customized lists and content type forms will be copied. Selecting this option makes the copy much slower then when it is not selected, so it should only be selected when copying lists and libraries that really require it. This includes Nintex, InfoPath as well as ASPX forms.
• List views: Customized lists views will be copied.
• User alerts: List user alerts will be copied. The item user alerts will be copied as well if the List Content option is selected. This requires the Server extension on the source and destination server.
• Preserve authors and timestamps: This option will bring over the values in the "Created By", "Created", "Modified By" and "Modified" columns while copying. See Authors and timestamps section for more details.
• Preserve version history: This option will preserve version history while migrating. For the option to be available, versioning should be enabled on the destination list or library. If the destination only allows for major versions, only the source major versions will be copied, not the draft (minor) versions.
• Preserve permissions: This option will preserve item-level permissions while migrating. With this option selected, all the item-level permissions will be preserved when copying, taking into consideration mapped users and groups and mapped permission levels. If it is not selected, everything will be set to inherit permissions from its parent (which is the default behavior in SharePoint).
• Preserve user alerts: This option will preserve user alerts associated to the items. This requires the server extension on the source and destination site.
• Web parts: This option will preserve Web parts when copying pages.
• Update links: This option will correct your links. This means that items that link to another item in your source site will be corrected during the migration to link to items in your destination site. For example, if you have a Wiki page library and two pages in this library - a Details page and a General page - and the General page contains a link to the Details page. If you migrate those two pages to a new Wiki page library on a new site and you don't select the option to update links, the new General page will contain the exact same link as it did before, which means that it will link to the old Details page. If you select the option to update links, the new General page will link to the new Details page.
• Flatten folder hierarchy: This option allows you to completely eliminate any folder structure you had when copying to the destination and put every item or document at the top-level.

List experience

List experience is available when you are running a Copy structure from:

• On-Premises to SharePoint Online/Office 365/SharePoint 2019
  • Options available:
    • Set to tenant default
    • Set to new experience
• SharePoint Online/Office 365/SharePoint 2019 to SharePoint Online/Office 365/SharePoint 2019
  • Options available:
    • Keep source experience
    • Set to new experience

Note: The new experience modernizes the look of pages in your online environments. ShareGate Desktop supports the most popular Web Parts for this experience.

Title and URL

Modify this field to change the title and URL in the destination (the title and URL will remain unchanged in the source).

Dependencies

Choose the location where the dependencies will be copied.

Mirror (default)

• This will copy all dependencies to the same locations in the destination as they are in the source of the migration. This means that if a site column from the parent site is used by the list being copied, this site column will be copied to the parent site of the destination site.

Root

• This will copy all dependencies at the root of the site collection at the destination. This will make sure that every dependency is always available for each subsite.

Note: If ShareGate Desktop finds a dependency in the hierarchy, your settings are considered to ensure nothing is broken when you migrate. For instance, if a site column is added to the library with the default setting, Add to all content types, SharePoint will add the site columns in Documents. When you then copy, the dependency will be on Documents (since it already exists in the destination Subsite), and ShareGate Desktop will merge the site column there. If this becomes an issue, you may want to manually recreate your;columns and content types at the site collection level of your new site.

Custom

• This will copy all dependencies to the selected site. This allows for a more flexible control over where dependencies should be copied.

Metadata

Note: Only available when using Copy content.

You can keep the default or set a new mapped value.

Set mapped value

• Set the value specified in the source column mapped with the given destination column. An indicator will appear to let you know if it is mapped to a source property already or if you need to set the mapping. Clicking on Set mapping will open the Map Properties window.

Set custom value

• Allows you to set a specific value to be used in a given column for a given content type while copying content.

Ask a value

• Stops at each item being copied using this content type and will ask you to specify a value for it.

Set mapped value or default

• Does the same as Set mapped value, but if the mapped source value is blank, it will use the default value that you specified.

Ignore

• Ignores this field and skips it.

Filter options

Note: Only available when using Copy content.

Time range filter

Toggle this filter to limit your migration to items that were:

• Created within a specific date range.
• Modified within a specific date range.

Note: ShareGate Desktop will use the most recent data. So if a item was modified after it was created, the filter will use the modified on date, and not the created on date. 

File extensions

You have the following options:

• Include all: Includes all file extensions in your migration.
• Limit to: Any specified file extensions will be included in the migration, all non-specified file extensions will be excluded.
• Exclude: Any specified file extensions will be excluded in the migration, all non-specified file extensions will be included. 

To input the file extension, type it out with no periods or special characters, and add a space to separate it from the next one.

Automatic export of this reports results

ShareGate Desktop can automatically export the results of your migration report to a SharePoint library.

For complete instructions see Setup automatic export to a SharePoint library.