An Experiment

Article Updated: Mar. 26, 2019

Introduction

I have been meaning to document what happens when you use the various move and copy operations in SharePoint. So, this weekend I set out to do that. I was not really expecting to find any surprises. I was wrong.

In fact, the results were so surprising for the “Move” operations that I decided to stop there, publish the results, and then break out the “Copy” operations to a separate article.

Background

In SharePoint there are a few ways to move documents:

• In classic SharePoint the end user only had Explorer View to move files.
• Modern SharePoint has introduced functionality directly into the browser interface to allow the moving of files.
• Lastly, the OneDrive sync client can be used to move files using Windows Explorer.

Note: Explorer View only works in Internet Explorer

Note: The “Content and Structure” interface that can be used for some move and copy operations been deprecated in O365. I have not included it in these tests.

There are several destinations for the move action:

• A different folder in the same library
• A different library on the same site
• A different library in a different site

Note: This experiment was done on a tenant set to Targeted release.

Expected Results

• Modern method will work 100% of the time
• Results with Explorer View will be terrible
• Results when moving files in synced OneDrive folders will be hit or miss

The Setup

Site, Library, and Folder Structure:

• Site#1 [Site Collection]
  • Documents [Library]
    • Source [Folder]
    • Destination [Folder]
  • Destination [Library]
• Site#2 [Site Collection]
  • Documents [Library]

All libraries contained the same columns. The columns added were “MyText” and “MyNum”.

I used PowerShell to perform the following:

1. Create 9 Test folders in the Source folder.
2. In each folder, upload 3 versions of a Word document (docx) as one user. Each version had different content and specific metadata.  
3. In each folder, Upload 3 versions of a Text document (txt) as one user. Each version had different content and specific metadata.  
4. Update the metadata on each Word document as a different User.
5. Update the metadata on each Text document as a different User.

In the end each source test folder looked like this:

The version history looked like this:

The Experiment

For the experiment, I took each file in the Source folder and moved them with the 3 methods (Explorer View, Modern Move Button, and Local OneDrive Folders) to a destination folder. The account used for the move operations was different that the accounts used to create and modify the files.

I then checked the resulting files using the following criteria:

Metadata	Did the most recent version of the custom metadata remain intact?
History/versions	Did the versions remain, and did the metadata for each version remain intact?
Created by	Did the Created By user remain intact?
Created	Did the Created date and time remain intact?
Modified by	Did the Modified by user remain intact?
Modified	Did the Modified date and time remain intact?

Test Results

Test: Moving to a Folder in the Same Library

*	Keeps all versions/history but replaces the last modified user with the mover.
**	Replaces with user that moved the files

Test: Moving to a Folder in a Different Library (Same Site)

**	Replaces with user that moved the files
†	Replaces all Modified users in version history with the user that moved the files. Keeps version of documents but loses all but the last metadata changes
‡	Replaces with Dec 31, 1969, 8:00pm
§	Replaces date with move date

Test: Moving to a Folder in a Different Library (Different Site)

**	Replaces with user that moved the files
‡	Replaces with Dec 31, 1969, 8:00pm

When trying to move files between site collections using Explorer View, Windows Explorer would produce an error, so a test for moving file between site collections using Explorer View was not possible.

Comments on Results

• Modern method worked most of the time but had trouble moving to a different library on the same site. This is surprising because the method had no issues moving to a library on a different site.
• Results with Explorer View were not terrible. In 2 of the 3 tests Explorer view results matched that of the Modern move method.  
• Results when moving files in synced OneDrive folders results were more miss than hit.
  • Results in the same library were reasonable.
  • Results in the same site, different library, were as bad as copying to a different site. All metadata and versions were lost (except for the Modified date, and some metadata stored in the Word document).
  • I thought with “Files on Demand” enabled, and the files not synced to the local drive, that the move might work differently, but the results were the same.  

Conclusion

Although the results were not exactly what I was expecting, the conclusion (and my recommendation) is the same:

Use the modern move button when moving files.

I honestly think that the results I got from moving from the same site to a different library may be a recently introduced bug, or that the results may only appear in the Targeted release.  

Source Files

I have added the Powershell and source documents to a repo in GitHub.