How To Quickly Copy and Paste Sites on Office 365

Many of us know how useful the Site Template is for replicating a site in SharePoint, but it can take quite a bit of time and always leaves loads of templates behind in the Solutions section.

So yesterday I found an easy and painless way to create copies of sites. I tried using the 'Content and Structure' section in Site Settings.

Now, first thing I found was that you couldn't paste a copy of a site in the parent site or a subsite. So I had to think of a workaround. The answer is to create another site at the same level before I did the copy.

So then I could use the Action 'Copy' when the Site I wanted to copy was highlighted in 'Content and Structure'. Then when the tree of sites to paste it in came up I choose the other site at the same level. I had made this site to have permissions just for the Admins so users didn't see this work around.

Then when the tree of sites to paste it in came up I choose the other site at the same level.

I had made this site to have permissions just for the Admins so users didn't see this work around.

I then renamed the Site and changed URL of the pasted one. I changed it to what the Site would eventually need to be called.

Then I copied this new pasted Site (with new name and URL) back into the original Site. I decided to leave the original pasted copy in the Admin Site (the one I created to get the copy working) as a Backup in case anything goes wrong with the Site in future.

If only Aston Villa could duplicate our best players so easily. Although I am not sure I could cope with two John Terry's!