Two wrongs that make a right

A while ago, a friend told me that he would like to upgrade his SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007.

He tried upgrading, but was unable to get his custom 2003 list in 2007.

Looking deeper, we discovered that when he created the list, he made sure to copy an existing list definition before modifying it (good for him!), but he took a little shortcut, and added the custom list definition to an existing site definition. This was causing him the headache now, as he was upgrading to 2007 … so we played with it for a while and came with the following plan which I would call: “the two wrongs that make a right”, and here is how it goes:

Important note regarding the screen captures (videos): the below are for demo purposes only. I do not use a production environment, hence I skip even basic steps like backup before copying a new DB. For this demo I concentrate on a single site/content DB. For comprehensive upgrade information – please see the TechNet: Upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007 ]

Another note: if you fail to see the videos (which are streamed from Windows Live Silverlight Streaming) – there are links to download them (in WMV format) at the bottom of the post.

And a critical note: don’t try to adjust your speakers – it’s just screen captures. No talking :)

Our story begins in SharePoint 2003 where we copy an existing list definition, modify it and add it to the built-in STS site definition (THIS IS WRONG #1)

We pre-scan and backup the 2003 database, and copy it outside of our demo machine

In SharePoint 2007 environment we copy a list feature, modify it, install and test it.

The feature that we choose is the one closest to our 2003 list.

Note that this is a 64bit environment.

We prepare the SharePoint 2007 environment for the upgrade process

We modify STS upgrade file (namely wssupgrade.xml) to map the old list definition to the new feature (THIS IS WRONG #2).

Please note that you should NOT modify this file, but copy it and modify the copy, as described in Step 4: Create an Upgrade Definition File .

We perform a DB upgrade and the sites got our feature activated !!!

After upgrade finishes - we get our long lost lists (THIS IS THE RIGHT :))

Links to download the WMV formatted screen captures:

1. Upgrade STS custom list - Part1 - build the list in 2003 [43 MB]
2. Upgrade STS custom list - Part2 - prepare to upgrade to 2007 [21 MB]
3. Upgrade STS custom list - Part3 - build a feature in 2007 [23 MB]
4. Upgrade STS custom list - Part4 - prepare to upgrade in 2007 26[ MB]
5. Upgrade STS custom list - Part5 - prepare wssupgrade.xml [22 MB]
6. Upgrade STS custom list - Part6 - do the upgrade [14 MB]

Enjoy SharePoint :)

Rona