Introduction
Sorry, I'm a little bit late for this third weekly tip. We just released Sharegate 2.7 and we now fully support converting content types while migrating files, items and folders. I will show you how in this article.
Case
This week, I will show you how to convert folder and document content types while migrating to SharePoint 2010. Why would I convert my content types? Why not? For an unknown reason, you decided to change the content type names and you added a few fields.
In this article, I will be using the
Copy SharePoint documents tool. This Sharegate tool allows users to easily copy documents with the metadata, the version history and the author.
SharePoint 2007 (source)
Original content type name: Employment contract
SharePoint 2010 (destination)
New content type name: Employment
New field: RelatedTags (Managed Metadata Column)
Step 1 - Remap SharePoint content types with the content type mapper
The content type mapper shows the source content types and we must assign the destination content types to each one (it automatically maps when the name is the same).
In our case, I drag & drop the "Employment" content type and assign it to the "Employment contract" content type. I then save it.
The same process can be done with the "Folder" content types. In our case, I drag & drop the "Contract Folder" content type and assign it to "Folder" content type. This means that my original standard folders will be transformed to contract folders while migrating to SharePoint 2010.
Step 2 - Remap SharePoint fields with the property mapper.
The property mapper shows the destination fields and we must assign the source fields to each one (it automatically maps when the name is the same).
In our case, I drag & drop the "Employee" and "Date" fields and assign then to the "Related employee" and "Signed date" fields respectively. I then save it.
Step 3 - Copy your documents and folders
That's it. I'm ready to copy my documents and folders. I simply configure a property template and start a copy.
Conclusion
In this weekly tip, I've shown how to convert content types while migrating from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. The same process could also be used to convert the document content types within the same site or library for reorganization purposes. The new content type mapper introduced with Sharegate 2.7 is dead simple and enables amazing migration scenarios.
Simon