Duplicate Site Collection

Duplicate Site Collection allows you to create a duplicate of an existing site collection. This is useful if you need to create multiple sites with the same structure, or if you would like to use an existing site as a base to build a new site off of.

Note: To migrate your site collections to a new environment or if you wish to have more options use Copy Structure.

Prerequisite

• You have Global admin, Farm admin or  SharePoint admin permissions.
• You have site collection admin permissions on the site collection(s) you want to duplicate.
• You are connected to your Microsoft 365 Admin center or SharePoint central admin.

Note: Site collection admin permissions are required even if you have higher admin privileges like SharePoint admin or Global admin permissions. For more information click here.

Index

• How-To
• Options
  • Title, Description, and URL
  • Site Collection Administrator
  • Elements to Include
  • Quotas
• Results

How-To

1. Select the site you want to duplicate. 
2. click Duplicate Site Collection  in the quick actions panel.
3. Select you preferred options (see below for all details).
4. Click 
5. The task will now run.
6. You can access the results anytime through Tasks.
   • For more information on the results, see Results.

Options

Title, Description, and URL

You can use these fields to give your new duplicate site your preferred name (required), description (optional), and URL (required). The URL will automatically be the same as the name, but can be manually changed.

You can change the managed path of the URL (available managed paths will appear in the drop-down menu).

Note: Explicit paths are not displayed with the site duplication option, but you can change this in the ShareGate Desktop Migration too.

Site Collection Administrator

You can leave this option as is or change it to select a new administrator.

If you want to select a new administrator, use the X to delete the current one, begin typing the name of the new administrator, and select them from the drop down.

Elements to Include

Select which elements you would like to include from the original site collection.

Quotas

Storage Quota

Choose between Automatic (default) and Manual.

See here for more information on how to check quota data for a site.

Server Resource Quota

You can leave the default (300) or manually input your preference.

See here for more information on storage limits.

Results

Once the Duplicate Site Collection action is finished running, you will see your results page.

You can see if an operation was successful in the Status column.

If there is a warning or error, you can see the reason in the Details column, and access more information by clicking the Help Me Solve This link.

Note: If you duplicate content to Microsoft 365 the files are first copied to Azure Storage before being copied to your environment, so you may see a status bar indicating that Microsoft 365 is importing items even after duplication is complete. This information will also be available in Tasks.

Filter your results by clicking Filter in the top-right corner.

Switch which columns you see using the Manage Columns button in the top-right corner.

Export your results to Excel by clicking  in the top-right corner.