How to Effectively Use Windows Explorer for Migrations

In this post I will explain how I've used Explorer View in both MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010.  This process lets you quickly move documents from either a MOSS Document Library to another MOSS Document Library, or from a MOSS Document Library to a SharePoint 2010 Document Library. 

In MOSS 2007, you can find Windows Explorer by navigating to a Document Library, clicking the "Actions" drop-down menu, and then selecting "Open with Windows Explorer".  

 

This will launch Windows Explorer and you will be able to see all of the documents in the library through this explorer interface.  

In SharePoint 2010, navigate to a Document Library and then select the "Library" ribbon tab. Windows Explorer is located directly below the Excel icon.  Depending on how your browser is sized, you will see one of the two screenshots below:

 

 

The Windows Explorer icon is the tiny computer in front of the folder, with an arrow pointing from the folder to the computer.  

Before I explain the process for migrating several MOSS 2007 Document Libraries into a single 2010 Document Library, it is important to note that this process will replace the Created By and Modified By metadata properties of the original documents.  Just something to keep in mind in case your company uses this metadata. 

To move the documents from 2007 to 2010, just open up Windows Explorer for the 2007 and the 2010 Document Libraries, and then copy and paste from 2007 to 2010.  It's almost as simple as that.  If you have metadata from the 2007 Document Library you want to carry over to the 2010 library, then after you've copied and pasted the documents, then open up the 2010 Document Library in Datasheet View (after you've created the necessary metadata columns in your 2010 Document Library).  Also open up the 2007 Document Library in Datasheet View so that you can basically just copy and paste the metadata from the 2007 to the 2010 environment.  Be careful doing this though, because the order of the documents in the 2010 Document Library may be different from the 2007 Document Library.  To fix this, just apply the same filtering on the 2010 Library so that copying over the metadata will be much easier.  

If you need to define required fields in the 2010 library, make sure you only do this AFTER you've copied over all of the metadata, or else you won't be able to copy the metadata in bulk.  

Please leave comments/questions if anything in this post is unclear.  The issue this post addresses is how to combine several 2007 Document Libraries into a single 2010 Document Library without using any scripts.