How to save and deploy SharePoint page templates

By João Ferreira Feb 15, 2023 Automation, PowerShell 0 Comments

SharePoint page templates are pre-designed pages that can be used as a starting point for creating new content. They often include pre-defined layouts, text, web parts, and can save time and effort in the content creation process.

Page templates can be customized and modified to fit the specific needs of a site collection, however is not possible to share them across different sites. In this article I’m sharing a solution to save your page templates and deploy them in different site collections.

In order to accomplish the steps described in this article you must install the latest version of the PnP PowerShell module, more information about how to do it can be found here.

Save SharePoint page templates using PnP PowerShell

1. Start by opening the PowerShell console in your computer
2. Copy the script below and update the variables $siteCollection, $templateName and $saveTemplateLocation

   $siteCollection = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/ProjectX"
   $saveTemplateLocation = "C:\Users\JOAO\Desktop\"
   $templateName = "template"
   
   Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteCollection -Interactive
   $siteTemplate = Get-PnPSiteTemplate -IncludeAllClientSidePages -Handlers Pages,PageContents -OutputInstance 
   
   $pagesTemplate = New-PnPSiteTemplate
   foreach($page in $siteTemplate.ClientSidePages)
   {
        if($page.PromoteAsTemplate -eq $true)
        {
             $pagesTemplate.ClientSidePages.Add($page)
        }
   }
   
   Save-PnPSiteTemplate -Template $pagesTemplate -Out ("{0}{1}.xml" -f $saveTemplateLocation, $templateName)
   

3. Execute the script and wait for it to finish, the process may take some time depending on the number of pages you have in the site collection

Once the process finishes you will get an XML file containing the definition of all the templates copied from the site collection.

Deploy SharePoint page templates using PnP PowerShell

1. With the PowerShell console open, copy the script below

   $siteCollection = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/"
   $templateFileLocation = "C:\Users\JOAO\Desktop\template.xml"
   
   Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteCollection -Interactive
   Invoke-PnPSiteTemplate -Path $templateFileLocation
   

2. Update the variables $siteCollection and $templateFileLocation with your own values
3. Execute the script and wait for it to finish

To check the success of the deployment, go to the site collection where you just installed the templates, create a new page and at the top you should have a section Saved on this site as shown in the following picture with all your templates.