Restoring a SharePoint Server Site – MS Technology Talk

If your team uses SharePoint to collaborate, you should be familiar with SharePoint sites and their importance. Since they often contain crucial data such as reports, agreements and the like, backing up SharePoint sites becomes vital. The need to backup a SharePoint site also arises in situations where you need to move the site to a different server. As such, teams that use them should be aware of the procedure to backup and restore SharePoint sites and also how to perform SharePoint site recovery in cases of unexpected disasters.

This article will serve as a guide for the procedure to backup and restore SharePoint sites. Let us begin with a brief introduction.

SharePoint & SharePoint Sites

For those who are unfamiliar with it, SharePoint is a web application platform in the Microsoft Office server suite that combines various functions that are traditionally separate applications. These include intranet, extranet, content management, document management and more. A SharePoint Site is a collection of pages, lists, and libraries. It may contain sub-sites, and those sites may contain further sub-sites. Sites can be created according to pre-packaged functionality. Examples of Site templates in SharePoint include: collaboration (team) sites, wiki sites, blank sites, and publishing sites.

Backing Up and Restoring a SharePoint Site

For creating a backup copy of a site or sub-site, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 can be used. Then that site can be recreated on the same server or on another server.Backing up and restoring a site, actually involves three separate operations: First, backing up of the site to a single file, then creationof a new empty site as a destination and finally,restoring the backup site to that destination.

You can choose to backup either only the top-level site or the top-level site along with any sub-sites. Backing up a site creates a content migration package or a .cmp file.

Important Note: You must have administrative rights for the SharePoint site to back it up. Admin rights to the server running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are not mandatory.

Backing up a SharePoint site

1. Go to File -> Open Site
2. In the dialog box that opens, select the website to be backed up and then click “OK”.
3. Hover on “Administration” on the Site menu and then click on “Backup Web Site”.
4. To include all sub-sites of the main site in the backup, check the “Include sub-sites in archive” option in the “Backup Web Site” dialog box.
5. Backing up a website requires a location to store temporary backup files. By default, Office SharePoint Designer 2007 uses the current website’s space for this. However, you can use another site on the same server or a location on another server on the same network — for example, \\Server name\Share name. To select a new location, click on “Advanced”, enter a new location and then click OK.
6. When prompted, click OK in the “Backup Web Site” dialog box.
7. Enter the location of the .cmp file in the “File Save” dialog box.
8. Type a name for the file in the “File Name” box and then click Save.

Note: This process might take some time depending upon the volume of data on the site. To know if there were any errors in the process, you can check the .log file after it completes.

Restoring a SharePoint site

As mentioned earlier, this step involved two phases – creating a new empty destination site and then restoring to that site.

Step A – Creating an empty destination site

1. Go to File -> New.
2. In the New dialog box select the Web Site tab and then go to General -> Empty Web Site.
3. Enter the target location for restoring the backup site in the Specify the location of the new Website box.
4. Click OK.

Note: The site can be restored to a different server either as a new top-level site or a sub-site under an existing top-level site.

Step B – Restoring the backup file to the destination empty site

1. Open the destination site and on the Site menu go to Administration -> Restore Web Site.
2. Browse and select the .cmp file to be restored in the File Open dialog box that appears. Then click Open.
3. If the destination site is running low on space, click on Advanced and then do one of the following:
   a. Enter a new location in the “Temporary location for archive files” box to store the archive files in another temporary location.

   Or

   b. Enter a new location in the “Location for import log file” box to store the .log file in another location.
4. When prompted, click OK in the “Restore Web Site” dialog box to confirm the process.

Concluding Lines

So there you have it, backing up and restoring a SharePoint site explained step-wise and simply. This backup and restore strategy will also work wonders if SharePoint site recovery is needed in times of disasters. So follow this procedure to safeguard your team’s work today!