Move a DriveItem to a new folder

Namespace: microsoft.graph

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.

This API is available in the following national cloud deployments.

Global service	US Government L4	US Government L5 (DOD)	China operated by 21Vianet
✅	✅	✅	✅

Permissions

Choose the permission or permissions marked as least privileged for this API. Use a higher privileged permission or permissions only if your app requires it. For details about delegated and application permissions, see Permission types. To learn more about these permissions, see the permissions reference.

Permission type	Least privileged permissions	Higher privileged permissions
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/items/{item-id}
PATCH /me/drive/items/{item-id}
PATCH /sites/{site-id}/drive/items/{item-id}
PATCH /users/{user-id}/drive/items/{item-id}

Request headers

Name	Description
Authorization	Bearer {token}. Required. Learn more about authentication and authorization.
Content-Type	application/json. Required.
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.

HTTP

PATCH https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/items/{item-id}
Content-type: application/json

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

C#

// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 5.x

// Dependencies
using Microsoft.Graph.Models;

var requestBody = new DriveItem
{
	ParentReference = new ItemReference
	{
		Id = "{new-parent-folder-id}",
	},
	Name = "new-item-name.txt",
};

// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=csharp
var result = await graphClient.Drives["{drive-id}"].Items["{driveItem-id}"].PatchAsync(requestBody);

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

CLI

mgc drives items patch --drive-id {drive-id} --drive-item-id {driveItem-id} --body '{\
  "parentReference": {\
    "id": "{new-parent-folder-id}"\
  },\
  "name": "new-item-name.txt"\
}\
'

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Go

// Code snippets are only available for the latest major version. Current major version is $v1.*

// Dependencies
import (
	  "context"
	  msgraphsdk "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-go"
	  graphmodels "github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-go/models"
	  //other-imports
)

requestBody := graphmodels.NewDriveItem()
parentReference := graphmodels.NewItemReference()
id := "{new-parent-folder-id}"
parentReference.SetId(&id) 
requestBody.SetParentReference(parentReference)
name := "new-item-name.txt"
requestBody.SetName(&name) 

// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=go
items, err := graphClient.Drives().ByDriveId("drive-id").Items().ByDriveItemId("driveItem-id").Patch(context.Background(), requestBody, nil)

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Java

// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 6.x

GraphServiceClient graphClient = new GraphServiceClient(requestAdapter);

DriveItem driveItem = new DriveItem();
ItemReference parentReference = new ItemReference();
parentReference.setId("{new-parent-folder-id}");
driveItem.setParentReference(parentReference);
driveItem.setName("new-item-name.txt");
DriveItem result = graphClient.drives().byDriveId("{drive-id}").items().byDriveItemId("{driveItem-id}").patch(driveItem);

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

JavaScript

const options = {
	authProvider,
};

const client = Client.init(options);

const driveItem = {
  parentReference: {
    id: '{new-parent-folder-id}'
  },
  name: 'new-item-name.txt'
};

await client.api('/me/drive/items/{item-id}')
	.update(driveItem);

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

PHP

<?php
use Microsoft\Graph\GraphServiceClient;
use Microsoft\Graph\Generated\Models\DriveItem;
use Microsoft\Graph\Generated\Models\ItemReference;


$graphServiceClient = new GraphServiceClient($tokenRequestContext, $scopes);

$requestBody = new DriveItem();
$parentReference = new ItemReference();
$parentReference->setId('{new-parent-folder-id}');
$requestBody->setParentReference($parentReference);
$requestBody->setName('new-item-name.txt');

$result = $graphServiceClient->drives()->byDriveId('drive-id')->items()->byDriveItemId('driveItem-id')->patch($requestBody)->wait();

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

PowerShell

Import-Module Microsoft.Graph.Files

$params = @{
	parentReference = @{
		id = '{new-parent-folder-id}'
	}
	name = "new-item-name.txt"
}

Update-MgDriveItem -DriveId $driveId -DriveItemId $driveItemId -BodyParameter $params

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

Python

# Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 1.x
from msgraph import GraphServiceClient
from msgraph.generated.models.drive_item import DriveItem
from msgraph.generated.models.item_reference import ItemReference
# To initialize your graph_client, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=python
request_body = DriveItem(
	parent_reference = ItemReference(
		id = "{new-parent-folder-id}",
	),
	name = "new-item-name.txt",
)

result = await graph_client.drives.by_drive_id('drive-id').items.by_drive_item_id('driveItem-id').patch(request_body)

For details about how to add the SDK to your project and create an authProvider instance, see the SDK documentation.

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.