Export list with attachments

Question

We have a legacy Sharepoint Services 2.0 server where users have been maintaining a few custom lists. There are items in these lists that have attachments (Word, Excel, PDF type documents). Over the years, these lists have grown large and we are trying to migrate this system to a Sharepoint 2010 server.

I know there is no direct way to migrate this application to the new server. I'm attempting to download all the lists in Excel which is easy enough. But how do I export all the attachments? Is there a tool/code I could use to get all the attachments to disk somehow?

Answer 1

I have found a way to export attachments from Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2007. Once connected to my list, right-click and select "Publish Selected Files...". From there I chose the "File System" option. This writes all my attachments to disk within individual folders id'ed by list item ids.

As for the lists themselves, those I just exported to Excel from the Sharepoint webview.

Answer 2

You can use the list web service to pull the list structure and get the URL to the attachment, from here you should also be able to add the attachments to the new list.

I did something similar for a forms library in wss 2 to 2010.

If you have access to the server you can use the object model to do that.

If the two SharePoint environments on the same domain you could use one of the migration tools that are on codeplex

EDIT

Here are a few links to some free tools that will help you:

Can run on Client machine:

http://www.messageops.com/software/office-365-tools-and-utilities/office-365-sharepoint-migrator

Runs on the sharepoint server: http://consoledocenum.codeplex.com/

There are other tools out there but i hope this helps

Cheers Stephen

Answer 3

In case if you have a really large list there are four more ways to do that:

1. Create PowerShell script
2. Code your own custom .NET application using CSOM
3. Use MS Access
4. Use 3-rd party tool like Listman.io.

Answer 4

Here's a script I wrote that will download all attachments within a task list. It creates folders named by the ID of each task that has attachments. Please see: http://www.reality-tech.com/how-to-download-all-attachments-for-all-tasks-in-a-list/