# Transfering inbox group messages to another instance?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** personal-messages
**Created:** [March 21, 2026, 4:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971 "2026-03-21T16:10:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Wall-E](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Wall-E)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2026, 4:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/1 "2026-03-21T16:10:16Z")
My discourse site has a group that needs to migrate to a different self-hosted Discourse instance, under a different domain. Only the users of that group will go to the new instance. Is it possible to transfer only the private group messages that are in our inbox to the new instance?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2026, 1:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/2 "2026-03-22T01:04:35Z")
I believe you can [move regular topics](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-topics-from-one-discourse-instance-to-another/38930), but for PMs, I don’t think there is currently a way. You may be able to do something with the API or rails console though.
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### Author:  [@Wall-E](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Wall-E)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2026, 2:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/3 "2026-03-23T02:41:50Z")
Okay, the list of topical threads in the inbox is not overwhelming, barely 10 threads. I wouldn’t know how to do that with the API. I guess a manual copy will be easier once everyone is registered in the new instance. We’ll just lose the correct timestamps.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2026, 2:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/4 "2026-03-23T02:56:45Z")
What if you converted the PMs into regular topics, move them, them move them back into a PM? Though I’m not sure about the group inbox flow.
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### Author:  [@Wall-E](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Wall-E)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2026, 7:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/5 "2026-03-27T19:32:12Z")
If by regular topics you also include "private” regular topics (only visible to a select group), that could be an option. In fact, since the transfer would be to only have a private site accessible only to that select group of people, I wouldn’t need to move them back into a group inbox after the migration, they can stay as regular topics. However, with your method, in the source instance, can I select specific private topics to be backed-up and restored in the new instance? Or would the transfer include all topics, and I would have to delete all the unrelated topics?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2026, 12:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/6 "2026-03-28T00:55:19Z")
You can move [multiple topics](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-topics-from-one-discourse-instance-to-another/38930#p-167431-multiple-topics-4).
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### Author:  [@Wall-E](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Wall-E)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2026, 3:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/7 "2026-03-31T03:08:57Z")
Will this work even if the authors of the migrated posts do not already have an account in the destination instance?
[UPDATE]: the users who authored the topics are also imported with that method. So, that worked well!
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 3:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/transfering-inbox-group-messages-to-another-instance/398971/8 "2026-04-30T03:09:41Z")
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