Export and back up everything

Save all your files, notes and metadata in one archive, encrypted or plain, restore it later, and take out single files when you need them.

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Filarr can put everything you keep in it (files, notes, folders, tags and settings) into a single archive. Keep that archive on another disk as a backup, or use it to move your data to another tool. You can restore it into Filarr later.

Export everything

  1. Open Settings → Storage & Data.
  2. Next to Export all, click Export.
  1. Choose the kind of export:
    • Encrypted export, marked Recommended: the archive is sealed with a password. Without that password, nobody can read it.
    • Plain export: an ordinary ZIP that any tool can open. Use it to move your data to another application.
  2. For an encrypted export, choose a Backup password and type it again under Confirm password.
  3. Click Export, then choose where to save the file.

A message follows the export step by step. Stop ends it after the current file, and nothing is saved. At the end, Filarr tells you how many files, notes and tags the archive holds, and names the files it could not include (a file whose content is not on this device, for example).

The trash is not included: the archive holds what is in place on the day you export.

Filarr does not make backups on its own, on a schedule. Export again from time to time, and keep the archive somewhere other than your computer.

Restore a backup

  1. Open Settings → Storage & Data.
  2. Next to Import a backup, click Import.
  3. Click Select a file… and pick the backup: a .zip archive or an encrypted .enc file.
  4. For an encrypted file, type its Backup password.
  5. Click Import.

Filarr restores the notes, folders and tags of the backup, then its files one by one, into the profile that is open. A message follows the progress. Stop ends the restore after the current file: what was already restored stays, and the message says where it stopped.

Take out single files

You do not need a full export to get a file out of Filarr:

  • right-click a file and choose Download to save a readable copy on your computer;
  • select several files and click Download in the selection bar to get them as a ZIP, see ZIP files and other archives;
  • in the desktop app, hold Alt while you drag a file out of Filarr onto your desktop to copy it there.

The copies you take out are not encrypted. Other exports have their own articles: notes and file versions.