How to import a 2010 list or library into 2013

Question

Hi,
Does someone have a good guideline or idea on how to import an exported 2010 list or library into Sharepoint 2013?
thanks for any help
regards
Martin

Answer 1

Though a little hands-on it is actually possible to do that without third party solutions! (with limitations)
On 2010 go into the list settings
Choose save list as template
Give it a name and check "Include content"
Download the .stp file from the list template gallery
Upload it to the list template gallery on your SharePoint 2010/2013 site
Create a list from it, the template should appear in the available templates when choosing the right locale
Voilá :-)
This also works from 2007 to 2010/2013 though it is a little trickier...
On 2007 go into the list settings
Choose save list as template
Give it a name and check "Include content"
Download the .stp file from the list template gallery
Rename it to .cab
Extract it
Open the manifest.xml
Change
<ProductVersion>3</ProductVersion>
to
<ProductVersion>4</ProductVersion>
Save
Pack everything with makecab.exe to a cab file (I'll come to that later)
Rename .cab to .stp
Upload it to the list template gallery on your SharePoint 2010/2013 site
Create a list from it, the template should appear in the available templates when choosing the right locale
So, now to the problems:
This does only work for lists/libraries with content less than 10MB :-(
This is a limitation of SharePoint and you cannot get arround that.
So that might most likely limit the approach to your task list.
Creating a CAB file is not really straigthforward. You need to create an inf file which describes the data which will be stored. See also here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3h8ff753(v=vs.80).aspx
In some cases the template does not show up in the dialogs, then you can only create the list through PowerShell, i.e. like that
# important, upload the .stp file first to the list template gallery of the site of the web where the list should be created
$webUrl = "http://<yourweburl>" # web in which you want to create the list based on the custom template
$listTemplateName = "<yourlisttemplatename>" # the name with which you saved the list into the list template gallery
asnp Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
$web = Get-SPWeb $webUrl
$listTemplate = $web.Site.GetCustomListTemplates($web)[$listTemplateName]
$Web.Lists.Add("ListName", "", $listTemplate);
4. Lookup columns are referenced with the list instance guid. As a result you would require to create the lookup lists first, then update the guid in the manifest.xml and then create the other list
5. Manage Metadata columns won't work unless you migrated the data base too from 2010 to 2013 and the guids of the terms remain.
Some time ago I wrote a PowerShell script which takes care all the above for you (including lookup columns), but this was still from 2007 to 2010.
I need to test it first on 2013 before I am going to post it here.
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