Follow these 8 simple steps

This week for Tech Thursday, I will explain how to copy from a production instance to a sandbox instance.

You can copy from production to sandbox from the Dynamics 365 Administration Center. See below for video and instructions:

NOTE: You will need global administrator credentials to copy from production to sandbox.

1.) Go to the Office 365 admin center and sign in.

2.) Choose Admin > Dynamics 365.

You should see a list of your Dynamics 365 instances. If you do not, click the Instances tab.

3.) Highlight the instance you want to copy from. This will be your Source Instance.

4.) Click the Copy button.

5.) Next, select the instance you want to copy to using the Target Instance dropdown menu.

NOTE: The target instance must be a Sandbox or Preview instance; Production instances cannot be selected.

There are two types of copy methods: full copy and minimal copy. Full copy will copy customizations and data. Minimal copy will only copy customizations.

WARNING: In both cases, the copied data will overwrite some or all of your target instance. Once you perform the copy, you will not be able to recover any overwritten data.

6.) Select the Copy Type.

Before performing the copy operation, you may also edit general settings and/or security settings as needed.

7.) When you are ready to perform the copy operation, click the Copy button.

8.) Click Yes in the confirmation dialog box.

After you confirm the copy, the operation will take some time to complete depending on the amount of data you have.

Congratulations! You have successfully copied from production to sandbox. You can now use your sandbox instance.

Join us next Thursday for more CRM tech tips!

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