If you have worked a little with SCO, you might have noticed that it can be quite a hassle to copy/paste content of a runbook.

When you paste it, it (often) destroys the layout and you get a result similar to this:

 

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It is very annoying and can be a difficult fix in some runbooks that contains many activities.

Luckily one of my student in my latest run of my 3 day Mastering System Center Orchestrator 2012 Workshop (Click here for more info) discovered this trick!

The trick is Not to use right-click, in fact you should not click on the workspace at all

When you have selected the source runbook do the following:

  • Go to Edit -> Select All

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  • Go to Edit -> Copy
  • Switch to new runbook, then go to Edit -> Paste

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Remember NOT to use the mouse in the workspace area before you do the 2 steps!

and your result should be an exact copy of the source runbook activities!

But please notice that you do not copy the properties of the runbook (returned data etc.)

 

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Huge thanks to Amir @ www.target.com for discovering this ! 🙂