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Home/System setup and customization/Environment setup and maintenance/Managing vaults/Content replication and archiving

Exporting content

Last updated on 3 April 2026

Admin

You can use content exporting for long-term archiving of content, synchronization of data among several vaults, or freeing up disk space on the server.

Do the following steps to export content:

  1. Open M-Files Admin.
  2. In the left-side tree view, expand a connection to M-Files server.
  3. Expand Document Vaults.
  4. Expand a vault.
  5. Select Content Replication and Archiving.
    Result:The content replication and archiving features are displayed in the right-side pane.
  6. Click the One-time Export... button.
    For information about creating a recurring export operation, see Defining a scheduled export.
    Result:The Export Content dialog is opened.
  7. On the Package Location tab, define the location for the content package.
    1. Click the ... button to define a temporary local folder for the content package.
    2. Optional: Click Set Account... to define the user account to be used for saving the content package to the selected local folder.
      You need to use a user account that has write permissions to the selected local folder.
  8. Optional: Still on the Package Location tab, enable the Use replication via cloud storage option to export to a cloud storage location.
    1. In the Connection string field, enter the provided connection string for connecting to the cloud storage.
      If you do not yet have the connection string, select Get or Request. The functionality is different in different M-Files environments.
      Option Description
      Get The connection string is automatically filled.
      Request An email message to M-Files customer support is opened. Remove unwanted locations from the line Preferred location and send the email.
    2. In the User-specified folder name field, enter a folder location in the cloud storage that will be used for exporting from one vault and importing to another.
    3. In the User-specified password for encryption field, enter a password of your choice that will be used for encrypting content packages. The same password must be used for exporting and importing the same packages.
  9. Optional: In the Configuration ID field, you can enter any string of characters for identifying this replication job.
    M-Files automatically creates a numeric ID for each scheduled replication job. You can enter an additional ID for the job to the Configuration ID field. The configuration ID can be any string of characters. If a configuration ID cannot be found when the jobs are processed, M-Files uses the job ID.
  10. On the Objects and Files tab, select Export objects and files and Export existing objects.
    For more information about the options on this tab, see Export objects and files.
    Note:

    When the Export only changes since latest run option is enabled, only new objects and content that has versioning or non-versioning changes since the given date and time are exported. If you export also metadata structure elements, the elements are not exported unless there are changes to files or objects.

    If you want to export metadata structure elements regardless of whether objects or files have been changed, do one of these operations:
    • Export the metadata structure separately.
    • Disable the Export only changes since latest run option. However, if you do not limit the scope of the export in any way, it can take a considerable amount of time to complete the export job.
  11. Optional: To define the conditions that objects must meet to be exported, select Use a search filter and click the Define button.
    1. In the Define Filter dialog, define the conditions that objects must meet to be exported and click OK once you have defined all the necessary conditions.
  12. Click the Structure tab.
    Result:The Structure tab is opened.
  13. Enable the Export structure option and either:
    • Check the All Elements option to export all metadata structure elements.
      or
    • Check individual metadata structure elements on the list to define individually the elements to be exported.
    For more information about the options on this tab, see Export structure.
  14. Click OK to close the Export Content dialog and to start the export.
    Note: Make sure that the export operation is complete before you take any actions in the vault.
When the export operation is complete, you can use the export package to import the exported content to another vault. See Importing content.
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