Backup, Restore, Merge & Import
Collection Data Handling Features
With v3.1 of My Collections we are adding features to allow you to restore collections from a backup, or importing data from a CSV file.
The existing "export" feature to save your collections has been renamed "backup" as this file can be used to "restore" your collections.
Overview of Features
There's some overlap in these features so it's worth recapping what each provides and suggest when it should be used.
Backup (previously export)
This allows you to backup your collection data to a ZIP file that can be stored off your phone. The backup will save all the collections you own to a single JSON document that is compressed as a ZIP file.
The backup option can be found in the navigation menu.
Limitations of backup:
Item images are not saved with the ZIP file. If you want to save the images, then you will need to extract the URLs from the backup and manually save the images.
CSV Export
There is an option in each collections search screen to save a CSV file of the current search results. This is a simple data format that can be used to save a partial copy of the collection.
CSV export is useful if you want a quick copy of the collection that can be used for further processing, e.g. use in a spreadsheet to total up item values, etc.
Limitations of CSV export:
It's a lossy format as it does not maintain any collection settings, such as custom field or tag definitions.
Item images are not exported. If you want to save the images, then you will need to extract the URLs from the CSV export and manually save the images.
CSV Import
There is an option in the collections menu to import data from a CSV file. The import guides you through how the rows in the CSV file should be mapped to fields or tags in a collection. It will create fields or tags where necessary. For more details, see Import CSV Collection.
The CSV import option can be find in the collection's menu.
Note that this is only available to paid subscribers.
Restore Collection
This feature allows you to restore a collection from a backup file. For each selected collection from the backup, it will create a new collection that is functionally identical to the ones taken from the backup.
You may want to restore a collection from a backup if you accidently delete a collection, or if you want to clone it.
It is possible to restore a collection that you do not own. This would allow you to move a collection from one account to another. You automatically become the owner of any restored collections.
The restore option can be found in the navigation menu.
Note that this is only available to paid subscribers.
Limitations when restoring a collection:
You can only restore a collection if there is an existing backup. You should backup frequently if you want data security beyond that provided by our cloud storage.
A restored collection will only have the owner as the singular user. Users who may have had access to the original collection will need to be added to the restored collection.
Since images are not saved in the backup, the existing URLs to images will refer to existing images. If the backup file is over two years old and the images are not referenced in the original/existing collection, it is possible that these images have been deleted from our cloud storage when we purge old images.
Whilst the collection is new and has a different internal identifier, the items in the collection maintain their existing ids. This will be a limitation if you were planning to merge a restored collection with the existing collection. Since the item ids are the same, they will overwrite each other in the merged collection.
Merging Collections
It is possible to selectively merge the collections you own into one collection. You might want to do this if you realise that your collections are similar enough to be together and can share tags and custom fields.
Merging is straightforward. Simply open the Merge Collections screen from the navigation bar and you will see the collections you own. Select two or more collections and press the "merge" button. This will create a new collection with the merged collections as containers. Once you are happy with your merged collection, you can delete the original collections without affecting the merged collection.
Limitations when merging collections:
All tag and custom field definitions from each collection are copied into the merged collection. This may result in duplication of tags and fields if they are named similarly. You will need to resolve these duplications manually.
Once a collection has been merged, you should not merge it again with either the merged collection or any indirect collection that may contain the items from the originals. This is due to a limitation where items keep their original ids. For example, if you merge your collections "cats" and "dogs" into "animals" and then decide you want to merge "cats", "animals" and "fish" into a new collection called "everything", then items from "cats" which already exist in "animals" would conflict resulting in overwriting of data in the "everything" collection.