Not all of the fields are copied to the new list when using SharePoint 2007 workflow Copy List Item action

Question

When using the ‘Copy List Item ‘ action in a workflow targeting a document library, I noticed that sometimes not all of the fields would get copied to the new list.  At first it seemed random in its appearance but after playing with it for a few minutes I noticed the factor which determined whether all of the fields got copied was the number of characters in the file extension of the file being copied from one document library to another.  Files with three letter extensions (such as sample.txt or sample.doc) worked fine whereas files with four letter extensions (such as sample.docx or sample.xlsx) would not!

Is this a known bug? Any solutions?

Answer 1

If you're promoting columns from a word document to sharepoint columns there is  timing issue between the promotion process and when the workflow starts the copy.

Take this example, if you had an InfoPath form and you chose to copy that form as soon as it was created by having your workflow start on new item creation then there is a good chance the copy process might have been performed before the actual fields were promoted to the sharepoint library's columns.

One suggestion would be to add a pause before your copy item action to see if that helps. It's an interesting observation about the file extension. I personally have not seen this issue.

Cheers

Answer 2

Hi r78,

 

As far as I know, there is no known issue regarding this symptom. I agree with dakova that you’d better try to add wait activity to wait until a required field is not empty. You can read this article for more detailed information to troubleshoot this problem:

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnwpowell/archive/2009/01/02/sharepoint-designer-copy-list-item-workflow-activity-does-not-copy-all-fields.aspx

 

Hope this helps.

 

Lu Zou

 

Answer 3

The columns are list columns in the document library, not part of the file itself.  So you're saying I should put a wait before the Copy List Item action?

-Lee

Answer 4

You could also try creating a new item in the new list and copying over all the fields.

Be sure to exclude the attachments and id fields though.

---

Kevin

Answer 5

That's what I ended up having to do.  After having talked with some other people regarding this issue I found that that I wasn't the only one to have run into this before.  This seems like something that Microsoft needs to look into since I can reproduce it easily on the MOSS install I have.

BTW I don't appreciate having the thread marked as answered by moderators when the question has in fact NOT been anwsered.

 

-Lee