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Move a DriveItem to a new folder

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To move a DriveItem to a new parent item, your app requests to update the parentReference of the DriveItem to move.

This is a special case of the Update method. Your app can combine moving an item to a new container and updating other properties of the item into a single request.

Items cannot be moved between Drives using this request.

Permissions

One of the following permissions is required to call this API. To learn more, including how to choose permissions, see Permissions.

Permission type Permissions (from least to most privileged)
Delegated (work or school account) Files.ReadWrite, Files.ReadWrite.All, Sites.ReadWrite.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account) Files.ReadWrite, Files.ReadWrite.All
Application Files.ReadWrite.All, Sites.ReadWrite.All

HTTP request

PATCH /drives/{drive-id}/items/{item-id}
PATCH /groups/{group-id}/drive/{item-id}
PATCH /me/drive/items/{item-id}
PATCH /sites/{site-id}/drive/items/{item-id}
PATCH /users/{user-id}/drive/items/{item-id}

Optional request headers

Name Type Description
if-match String If this request header is included and the eTag (or cTag) provided does not match the current eTag on the folder, a 412 Precondition Failed response is returned.

Request body

In the request body, supply the new value for the parentReference property. Existing properties that are not included in the request body will maintain their previous values or be recalculated based on changes to other property values. For best performance you shouldn't include existing values that haven't changed.

Note: When moving items to the root of a drive your app cannot use the "id:" "root" syntax. Your app needs to provide the actual ID of the root folder for the parent reference.

Response

If successful, this method returns a 200 OK response code and updated DriveItem resource in the response body.

Example

This example moves an item specified by {item-id} into a folder in the user's drive with the ID new-parent-folder-id.

PATCH /me/drive/items/{item-id}
Content-type: application/json

{
  "parentReference": {
    "id": "{new-parent-folder-id}"
  },
  "name": "new-item-name.txt"
}

Response

The following example shows the response for this move request.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-type: application/json

{
  "id": "0123456789abc",
  "name": "new-item-name.txt",
  "parentReference":
  {
    "driveId": "11231001",
    "path": "/drive/root:/Documents",
    "id": "1231203102!1011"
  }
}

Error responses

See Error Responses for more info about how errors are returned.