Question

I accidentally deleted a time tracking site yesterday in sharepoint 2010 and unfortunately it did not go into the recycle bin. I was unable to find it either by the site collection administrators view of the recycle bin, my own view, or via powershell get-spdeletedsite cmd.

In the end I restored a database backup, used the unattached backup explorer, got the site as a cmp, created a blank site then used PS to import the cmp into it.

Unfortunately, the data is time tracking data and the person who created the item is a vital piece of information. When I restored the list, the admin user name was used to create all the entries, losing month’s of person-specific data.

Does anyone know how to either:
a) restore a cmp with created by and other meta data preserved,
b) restore a cmp (or equivalent) of a list with createdby and other meta data preserved
c) update a metadata column of an existing list based on a sharepoint database
d) any other way of getting the ‘created by’ column up to date

Thanks in advance,
Steff

Answer 1

Both the Export-SPWeb and Import-SPWeb have a parameter “IncludeUserSecurity” which as it says will include user security for the exported site. When executing the “CreatedBy” will unfortunately be still the import user, but the last update user will show the correct user.

I don’t know if that information is enough? In worst case you can do some scripting which will set the createdby user the same as the updated user, since in the imported site this will by default be the wrong user.

Hope this helps.