# Discourse export assistance needed
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332
**Category:** Migration
**Created:** [May 4, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332 "2020-05-04T15:29:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Charles.Dane](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Charles.Dane)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/1 "2020-05-04T15:29:28Z")
I’m new to Discourse and have recently inherited a ownership/admin of small, older Discourse community. One of the things I need to do is perform an export of the community’s content: topics, replies, endorsements, associations (author, participants), etc. in CSV, XML or JSON.
As a platform novice, how would I go about securing this export? I’ve performed a site backup, but I can’t do anything with the sql file in the tar.gz that I received.
I’m currently on the Standard plan.
Thanks!
(Updated to include that my community is on Discourse.)
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/2 "2020-05-04T16:31:44Z")
The first thing to do is search “#howto YOUR\_OLD\_COMMUNITY\_SOFTWARE”. Then you look in [discourse/script/import\_scripts at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/script/import_scripts). If you are coming from some platform that isn’t supported, the best course of action is to start with one of the existing import scripts. vbulletin might be a good starting point. If that’s not your style, then you can post in #Marketplace. I generally do a few of these a month.
If you are coming from a popular forum, you can switch to the business plan, pay for a year up front, and get it done for free.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/3 "2020-05-04T16:38:17Z")
EDIT: @Charles.Dane Since you are using Discourse already, this is what you need to do:
Just download a backup and restore it to your new site.
You’ll need to contact support and have them restore it.
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### Author:  [@Charles.Dane](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Charles.Dane)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/4 "2020-05-04T16:42:51Z")
Hi Jay, appreciate for the response.
I just updated my post to specify the community I’ve inherited is already on Discourse.
Thanks for the advice to take a look at GitHub, I’ll see what I can find over there.
Cheers!
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 4:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/5 "2020-05-04T16:56:51Z")
> [@Charles.Dane](#):
>
> One of the things I need to do is perform an export of the community’s content: topics, replies, endorsements, associations (author, participants), etc. in CSV, XML or JSON.
What do you want to accomplish with this?
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### Author:  [@Charles.Dane](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Charles.Dane)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 7:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/7 "2020-05-04T19:13:21Z")
Thanks for the response. My organization is in the process of investigating community platform options, and a review of the community’s content (in one of the three formats) will help us determine our overall scope of effort.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2020, 1:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/8 "2020-05-05T01:06:28Z")
So your have some tool that you want to use to…somehow analyze the data in discourse? What is that tool? What is the analysis that you want to do?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2020, 7:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/9 "2020-05-05T07:31:02Z")
If you absolutely need a database dump in XML/CSV or JSON, why not download a backup and then convert it?
There are many tutorials online:
>
The process would be
1. Download backup
2. Extract backup
3. Load backup into local postgres database
4. Export the tables you wish to export as CSV/JSON or XML
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2024, 8:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-export-assistance-needed/150332/10 "2024-07-01T20:14:10Z")