Welcome to the new Box Support website. Check out all the details here on what’s changed.

Box Status

Problem with copying File and Folder with Metadata

Follow
New post
anggrey11

Hi. I have a problem with copy file and folder with metadata. The problem is that after copying to the resulting file or folder there are no metadata, although they are in the source object. The problem is especially important when copying a folder with a large number of subfolders and files. In this case, copying metadata manually is very costly. Is it a bug or expected behavior? And whether there are any options to bypass this problem?
I would be grateful for the help.

0

Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • Murtza

     That's the expected behavior. There is a workaround available through the API. After you copy the file, you can use the API to get the metadata from the original file and add it to the copy's metadata. Having the option to copy both the file and its metadata sounds like a great feature request. I'll share this idea with our Product team.

    2
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Andrew_B

    I have just encountered the same issue. Have spent several hours setting up "template" structures to be used as basis for creating project-specific document storage in Box. To ensure it was clear what data should be included in each of the folders, tags were added to each folder and sub-folder (up to 250 per template!) Once templates were finalised, I checked functionality by copying template to create project folder, and notices that all the tags were missing.

    Is this suggestion being implemented, or is is there a simple way to bring the tags when copying a list, as once this is finalised, an administrator will set up the project folders for all in the company, so do not want a solution that requires a workaround in the API. Thanks

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • alinabilc

    I had a similar issue where after copying a folder with many subfolders in a new location the metadata was all gone.

    When the folder is copied it inherits the metadata from the new parent folder and it completely deletes the subfolders metadata leaving attributes that once had metadata applied empty. We were hoping to do this and avoid a lot of manual work going through all the folder and applying metadata but instead just copy the same folder structure to different parent folders. Would you be able to recommend another solution? Prefer something that does not necessitate use of API 

     

    However, this does not happen when the folder is simply moved. But simply moving folders will not work for us! 

     

    Thanks!

     

    0
    Comment actions Permalink
  • Hermoso, Eric

    Is there any progress on the ability to move files and folders without losing metadata? Or do we still need to use the Box SDK to preserve metadata when copying files to a new folder?

     

    Thanks

    0
    Comment actions Permalink

Please sign in to leave a comment.