Project archives

An archive is your entire project as a single .zip — boards, entities, documents, media and all. It is the backup, the hand-off, and the way a project moves between organizations.

Export one

Two places, same archive.

From the project: settings → Export → Download ZIP. See project settings.

From the dashboard: the card menu on any project → Export.

Your browser asks where to save before it starts, because the file is written as it downloads. Dismissing that dialog cancels the export.

Then it works through three phases, and you can Cancel at any point:

1. Preparing export…
2. Downloading media (3/17 files — 1.2 MB / 5.0 MB)
3. Creating ZIP archive…

The file is named «project name»_«YYYY-MM-DD».zip, with anything outside A–Z a–z 0–9 - _ replaced by an underscore.

If something could not be fetched you get Export completed with N warning(s) and the first one — usually a single media file. The archive is still valid; that file is simply not in it.

What is in the archive

The zip is deliberately two things at once: a restore format and a readable copy.

Inside the zip	What it is	Readable	Used when importing
manifest.json	Version, project name, slug, description, cover	Yes	Yes
project.yjs	The project itself, compressed	No	Yes — this is the restore
content.json	Everything structured, as readable JSON	Yes	No
documents/…html	One HTML file per document, in its folder	Yes	No
media-map.json	Which file in media/ is which media item	Yes	Yes
media/…	Your actual files, original bytes	—	Yes
document-content/…	Each document’s body, compressed	No	Yes

Media travels inside the archive, as the original bytes. Nothing points at a server.

Import one

From the projects dashboard: Import, beside New Project. It accepts .zip only.

It runs four phases — Reading archive, Creating project, Uploading media, Finalizing — and ends with Import successful!, or Imported, with problems and the list of what went wrong. Then Open project takes you straight into it.

What is preserved, and what is not

Preserved	Changed
Every internal id — boards, nodes, entities, documents, media, fields	The project’s own id, slug and name
Every reference between them	—
Your media, under the same media ids	—
Document bodies	—

Because the ids survive, so does everything that points at them. A variableRef on a node still finds its variable; a mention still finds its entity.

The mention and backlink indexes are cleared and rebuilt as documents are opened — they are derived data, so restoring a stale copy would be worse than recomputing.

The new project is created empty of the standard node-type pack, because the archive brings its own.

The version must match exactly

Every archive records the version it was written by. The current one is 4.1.0.

An archive from before 4.0.0 has no restore data at all and is refused with This archive was exported before TaleShard 4.0.0 and can no longer be imported.

An archive is a backup, not a format. Treat it as something you refresh, not something you file away for three years and expect to open.

Limits

Limit	Value
Imports running at once	One per person
Exports running at once	One per project
Documents, or media files, in one archive	10,000 each
Per-file size, and storage per project	Your plan’s — the same guards as any upload. See media.
Projects	Your plan’s
An import session	Expires after an hour

Importing also requires a verified email address.

What breaks

Situation	What you see
The version does not match	The message above. Re-export.
The zip is missing a required file	Invalid ZIP: missing «name»
You already have an import running	You already have an import running. Wait for it to finish, then try again.
A media file trips a plan limit	A warning naming it — the import continues
A document body did not upload	A warning; that document opens empty
The cover image did not upload	A warning; the project has no cover
The restore itself failed	Failed to restore project data — and the half-made project is deleted rather than left behind
The session expired	Import session not found or expired. Restart the import.
A media link expired mid-export	Presigned URL expired (403)

A media file that fails is a warning, not a failure: you get the project, minus that file.