Run a SharePoint 2013 Visual Upgrade in Powershell

Jonathan Browne
By | Updated December 20, 2017 | 2 min read
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If you’re carrying out platform upgrades from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 these steps may interest you.

We have come across site collections where the “upgrade now” option in the SharePoint UI for the visual upgrade has failed, yet the PowerShell upgrade command worked perfectly.

 

PowerShell Upgrade Steps:

  1. Open PowerShell
  2. Restore the content database to SharePoint 2013 SQL by mounting the site:
    Mount-SPContentDatabase “MyDatabase” -DatabaseServer "MyServer" -WebApplication https://sitename 

     

    Mount -SPContentDatabase Visual upgradeBrightWork doesn’t support SharePoint 2010 visuals, so you won’t yet be able to navigate to your site. You will if it’s a regular SharePoint site.

  3. In PowerShell, run:
    Get-spsite 

    Get -spsite The site you just upgraded should be listed as type 14.

  4. Run
    Test-SPSite https://server/sitecollection

    Test-SPSite PowerShell UpgradeWarnings are ok in this test, but errors are not good. Please see the below link for more on test results.

  5. Finally, run
    Upgrade-SPSite https://server/sitecollection –VersionUpgrade

    Upgrade-SPSite SharePoint visual upgrade Powershell

  6. Once this reaches 100% you will have the 2013 visuals throughout your site collection.

 

 

Originally posted 26 Feb 2014. Updated to include images. 

 

Image credit 

Jonathan Browne
Jonathan Browne

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