Moving SharePoint Library Documents from one Site to Another with Preserving MetaData

As a SharePoint Developer, You may have faced a situation of moving sharepoint document library from Site A to Site B. The most used approached are given as follows:

One way is to open the windows explorer and copy pasting the documents

Another way is to save the source list as template including content and then recreating the list in destination using template

You might be wondering how modified date, modified by column values changed to a new values. This is the major drawback of the above mentioned methods. It doesn't preserve metadata.

To preserve meta data while moving the sharepoint document library

1. Create a destination List or Document Library.
2. Navigate to the ‘Site Content and Structure’ page. You can access this site with either Site Actions > Site Settings or http://portal/_Layouts/sitemanager.aspx
3. Navigate to your source List and select all the items that you would like to have moved. Then click on Actions > Move and select your destination list.

In this way, you dont lose the values of Modified Date or Modified By column values.