Solved: Moving SharePoint 2010 Designer Workflows between Sites

In man occasions you would be faced by the need to move workflows you developed using SharePoint designer from one site to another. This might be the case if for example you developed and tested the workflow on a testing environment and now wants to move to the production environment without the need to re-develop the workflow.

The steps to perform this is rather simple:

1. Export the workflow to Visio.
2. Edit the VWI archive and delete the configuration file.
3. Import the workflow back to your destination site.

So open the SharePoint designer and open the source site. click on the workflows link on the left and then the workflow you want to move. Click on the ribbon on export to Visio button.

Now rename the file exported (VWI file) to be a ZIP file and open it with Windows Explorer. You will find a file named “workflow.xoml.wfconfig.xml”

Just delete this file. Now rename the archive back to be a VWI file.

Now open the destination site and click the import from Visio and browse to the edited VWI file. This will allow you to re-associate your workflow as if it was created or exported from Visio rather than the designer while preserving any development made in the workflow it self.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 24, 2012
  clever move. thanks for the tip

• Anonymous
  April 26, 2012
  You made some decent points there. I looked on the internet for the issue and found most individuals will go along with with your website. www.scribd.com/.../SharePoint-Developers

• Anonymous
  October 30, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 13, 2012
  Great stuff!!! Thanks

• Anonymous
  September 23, 2013
  In my workflow there is a rules file and specifies the public key.  Should this be copied?

• Anonymous
  April 10, 2014
  Great article.. thanks

• Anonymous
  May 08, 2014
  Nice artice, I think you should practice drawing circles though

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2014
  Brilliant, worked like a charm. Thanks very much.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2014
  Not woking on my environment,Pleas let me know how to do.I got message you are chosen wrong file.

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2015
  Works excellent. You just need to remove a single file ending with "xoml.wfconfig.xml".

• Anonymous
  April 25, 2015
  Great tip. very simple but worked like a charm. Thank you very much!

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2015
  Thanks for this, saved me so much time!

• Anonymous
  July 09, 2015
  can't able to remove .zip extension

• Anonymous
  September 24, 2015
  Please follow  this link forums.winamp.com/showthread.php to rename file to .VWI.

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2015
  it does create the 2010 wf in the new environment but i found that the workflow settings seem to have disappeared. also i want to be able to change the settings to get the WF kicked off when an item is added instead of manually. there does not seem to be a way to do that