Copy files one by one can be painful if you’ve got a lot of them or if you need to do it regularly, there has to be a way how to automate this with Power Automate.
Let’s build a simple workflow to copy all files from one location to another on user request. That means we want to start from Instant flow using Manually trigger flow trigger.
Add New step: ‘Get files (properties only)’ and select the source of the files.
Add New step: ‘Copy file’. Select the source site, and use the ‘Identifier’ output from ‘Get files (properties only)’ as the ‘File to Copy’.
Select ‘Destination Site Address’ and for the ‘Destination folder’ fields. Instead of using dynamic content in the field click on the folder icon on the right side to display selection of all available libraries on the destination site. Also select what should happen it file already exists on the destination site.
Now you can find it under My flows and run it by pressing the Play button.
If your document library contains also folder structure, you might need to add one more condition into the Power Automate flow to copy the folders together with the files, and even keep them synchronised in the future.
You can also copy files between multiple libraries in a single flow with a simple configuration list, or copy the created and modified information.
This is great except it copied all the files and nested folders from one site and placed them all in the root folder of the destination. Is it possible to maintain the folder structure during the copy?
Hello Angus,
I think you’ll need to go folder by folder, ‘Get files’ from one folder, ‘Copy file’ to the same folder on the other site. And repeat that for all the folders.
Hello Angus,
I played with the flow a bit and found a solution for the folder structure: https://tomriha.com/how-to-copy-sharepoint-files-including-folder-structure-in-power-automate/
Hey guys.
My work team changes the file title with the current date at the end.
How do I copy the file that changes the title every time?
Hello Lucas,
I believe the solution would be the same, if you build a flow to take all the files and copy them to another location then the file name doesn’t matter, it’ll create a file with the same name, with the date at the end, in the target location.
Great article Tom! I was looking for a long time for a way to copy SharePoint files (or actually SharePoint pages from the Site pages library) with Flow. This works great (for the library name, just enter the library GUID) 🙂
Thanks for sharing. I have a question, is there a way to retain the date created and modified dates from the original library?
Hello UB,
I would recommend to create a separate SharePoint columns for the information as described in the latest post: https://tomriha.com/copy-files-including-created-and-modified-date-with-power-automate/.
Hi,
Is there a way to trigger the copying when there is any change in the source folder ?
thanks
Hello Harsh,
yes, it is. I wrote a blog post about such flow here: https://tomriha.com/synchronise-sharepoint-libraries-with-folder-structure-in-power-automate/, all you have to add is to select a specific folder in the trigger.
I keep getting a URL not valid error in the target tenant. I gave bi-lateral permissions to each tenant as well and nothing. is there another step in in there that I am missing?