SharePoint Super-Secret Site Template

You’ve added apps and pages, you’ve laid things out just how you want them. You’ve toiled for hours. You’ve created the perfect site! You are ready to create your site template so you can stamp it out for all your sites and save yourself some time.

Simple, right!?!

Create a Site Template

1. Go to the site which you want to use as a template.
2. Click the “gear” and click “Site Settings” (or, “site information” and then access advanced site settings from there)
3. You’re looking for “Save site as template”

…but it’s not there? Where did it go?

“Save as site template” is missing! AAAAAHH!!!

 

 

Chances are you have publishing features active on the site collection. The “save site as template” link may be gone, but you can still access the functionality if you really need to. This is where the “super-secret” (well, not really*) site template link comes in.

*It’s not really a secret…you can probably find this info in at least a hundred blogs out there already. I just decided to save myself some time and put it in my own blog so I don’t have to search next time I need to do it.

Create a Site Template – Take 2

1. Go to the site which you want to use as a template.
2. Click the “gear” and click “Site Settings” (or, “site information” and then access advanced site settings from there)
3. Publishing features are active on the site collection, so you will need to proceed to the save template link by entering it at the end of the URL manually.**

Simply copy and paste /_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx as the end of the site URL once you are on the site you want to make into a template.

https://hkbetz24.sharepoint.com/XXX-XXX/_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx (where XXX-XXX is the specific site or subsite string)

For example, the URL will look like this if you want to make a template out of the Products site: https://hkbetz24.sharepoint.com/sites/products/_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx

1. Complete the following items:
   1. File Name (avoid using spaces or special characters)
   2. Template name (what your admin users will choose from when creating a new site)
   3. Template description
   4. Include Content (y/n) (This is helpful if you have documents or files you want included with every site)
2. Click “OK”
3. The new site will be created

**If publishing features are not active, a link to “Save Site as Template” will be visible on the “Site Settings” page.

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Note: I’m writing this with O365 SharePoint in mind, but you can do the same thing for other versions of SharePoint.  ” /_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx ” for SharePoint 2013, 2016 and online. For SharePoint 2010 its simply ” /_layouts/savetmpl.aspx”.

Also note: I’ve run into some people who use this a lot, and others who like to steer away from site templates completely when using SharePoint Online.  That’s a discussion for another day. 🙂