SharePoint Online PowerShell : Migrate Webparts between pages.

2024-01-17

Introduction

Multiple times we get into a situation where we need to migrate webparts between pages. It's an easy job to add a webpart directly but it become very time consuming when you have to do it for multiple pages manually. In this article, I will discuss how to migrate webparts from one Site collection / Page to another Site collection /Page in SharePoint Online using PnP Online PowerShell. The Same process can be extended over multiple pages if needed.
Same steps can be followed for SharePoint On-premise infrastructure using counter PowerShell commands in Farm.

Pre-Requisite

Install latest SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline.msi from location https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-PowerShell/releases

Source and Destination Site collection have required webparts
Source and Destination Page have same page layout

Overall process is consisting of 2 steps

Download and save webpart details in XML schema in local drive
Add all webparts to new Page using locally saved XML schema.

Download XML Schema

First step is to connect to SharePoint Online Site Collection

 $credentials = Get-Credential
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $sourceUrl -CreateDrive -Credentials $credentials

$sourceUrl : This is location of source SharePoint Online site.

Now we will use "Get-PnpWebPartXml" command of PnP SharePoint Online PowerShell to download all webparts from a specified page.

   Write-Host "Downloading WebPart Xml.."  -ForegroundColor Cyan
      $xml = "<WebParts>"
      Get-PnPWebPart -ServerRelativePageUrl $FileServerRelativeURL -Web $webPath | ForEach-Object {
             $xml += Get-PnPWebPartXml -ServerRelativePageUrl $FileServerRelativeURL -Web $webPath -Identity $_.Id
      }
      $Xml = $xml.replace('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>','')
      $xml += "</WebParts>"
      $file = $XmlFilelocation + "\webparts.xml";
  Set-Content -Path $file $xml

Different variables used:
$FileServerRelativeURL : Page relative URL in the Source Site collection e.g. /sites/abc/article.aspx
$webPart: Web Relative URL e.g. /sites/abc
$xmlFileLocation: Local drive location to save the XML file e.g. C:/XML

Above commands will download all webpart Schema and save as webparts.xml in local drive.

XML will look as follows:

Apply XML Schema

Connect to the Target Site Collection

 $credentials = Get-Credential
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $targetUrl -CreateDrive -Credentials $credentials

$targetUrl: Target SharePoint Online site url.

Access the XML file from local drive and change references of old site collection in the Schema using 'replace'

 $xmlFilePath = $path  + "\webparts.xml"
$content = Get-Content $xmlFilePath
[xml]$xmlContent = $content.replace($OldSubSiteName,$NewSubSiteName)

$path: Local drive path where we have saved the schema XML : C:\XML
$OldSubSiteName: Old sub site name
$NewSubSiteName: New sub site name

Second step is to check out the File

  Write-Host $page
  Write-Host "Checking out "$page -ForegroundColor Gray
  Set-PnPFileCheckedOut -Url $page -Web $subSiteRelativePath

$page: Relative path of the page where we want to add webparts
$subSiteRelativePath: Relative path of the sub site

Iterate through all webparts in XML, remove if already exist and add again.

 Write-Host "Adding Webparts" -ForegroundColor Gray
   $xmlContent.WebParts.WebPart | ForEach-Object {
     Remove-PnpWebPart -ServerRelativePageUrl $page -Web $subSiteRelativePath -Title $_.Title
     Add-PnPWebPartToWebPartPage -Xml $_.OuterXml -ZoneId $_.ZoneId -ServerRelativePageUrl $page -ZoneIndex 0
   }
Write-Host "Added Webparts" -ForegroundColor Green

Final step is to Check in the page in Major version

 Set-PnPFileCheckedIn -Url $page  -Web $subSiteRelativePath  -CheckinType MajorCheckIn  -Comment "Updated webparts"
Write-Host "Checked In "$page -ForegroundColor Gray

Conclusion

Above I explained a simple process of migration of webparts between pages. We can extend this process and make a script which will migrate multiple webparts over different Webs/Pages. I have used above script to migrate multiple webparts span across multiple pages in different sub site by modifying the XML elements and parsing accordingly.
I have uploaded scripts at location

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