Table of Contents
Exporting & Backing Up Your Articles
At HelpDocs we take regular backups of all your data, so you don't need to worry. That said, if you need a copy of your data for any reason, it's super easy to grab it from our API.
Exporting your content can be super useful if you want to do some advanced filtering, run through content during meetings, or swap to a different platform.
At HelpDocs we take regular backups of all your data so you don't need to worry about data loss. That said if you need a copy of your data for any reason it's super easy to grab.
Downloading a CSV File
If you wanna grab a quick copy of all or some of your articles to use as a spreadsheet or import to another piece of software a CSV is the answer.
Exporting All Content to CSV
You have a few options when downloading to CSV:
- Include working copy
- Include body
- Include both
- Include neither (recommended)
- Head to Settings > Migrations
- Under Export & Backup click
more next to CSV - Select your option
Export Selected Content to CSV
You also have the option to export some of your content to CSV. This is super useful when you only want to upload certain content somewhere else or run through a selected amount of content in meetings.
- Head to Content (or click here)
- Select which categories or individual articles you want to export using the checkboxes
- To the top right click the Export β button
- Select which option you'd like to download
- You're done β¨
CSV Download Options
Option | Description | Additional Columns |
Include Working Copy | Adds |
|
Include Body | Includes the If your articles contain extremely large amounts of content, the CSV export may time out. In that case, use the ZIP export or the API instead. |
|
Include Both | Combines both options above. Includes working copy data plus text and body fields |
|
Include Neither (default) | Includes only an This is the default for CSV exports |
|
All export options include these base columns:
article_id | title | description | tags | is_published | is_private | show_toc | editor_type | user_id | author_name | url | relative_url | category_id | category_title | category_url | category_relative_url | is_stale | stale_reason | stale_source | stale_triggered_at | updated_at | created_at |
Multilingual Columns
If you're running a multilingual Knowledge Base, your CSV export will also include columns for each secondary language. For example, with French as a secondary language, you'll see these additional columns:
title_fr | slug_fr | description_fr | tags_fr | excerpt_fr | text_fr | body_fr | category_title_fr |
These columns follow the same pattern for any other secondary languages you have enabledβjust replace the language code accordingly (es for Spanish, de for German, etc.). This makes it super easy to manage and review all your translations in one place π
Downloading a ZIP File
You can export your categories and articles to a .zip file. It'll sort them out into folders for you with metadata included as .yaml files.
ZIP exports are perfect if you're migrating to a different platform, need version-controlled backups, or want a local copy of your entire Knowledge Base structure. Each category becomes a folder, articles are saved as markdown files, and metadata lives in separate YAML files.
- Head to Settings > Migrations
- Under Export & Backup click
next to ZIP - Click Download as ZIP
Exporting to Google Sheets
Creating a Google Sheet of your articles is just as simple.
- Head to Settings > API Keys and create an API key
- Create a new Google Sheet
- In the top left cell, type =IMPORTDATA("https://api.helpdocs.io/v1/article?format=csv&key=your_api_key")Don't forget to replace your_api_key in the link above with the API key you just created.
- Hit Return
- Save your new sheet
Google will pull all your articles from the HelpDocs API and display them in your sheet.
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Moving an Article to a Different Category
Unassigned Articles
