How to import or export your forms

The Import and Export page is your safety net for everything Forms-related on your site. It lets you download every form you have built — every contact form, every catering inquiry, every newsletter sign-up, every wholesale application — into a single saved file you can keep on your computer, share with a teammate, restore from later, or move to a sister site. It also lets you take a saved file from somewhere else and pour those forms back into your site as fresh, working forms ready to embed on a page.

Think of it as what a backup is for your photos: a clear, deliberate way to make sure nothing important is one careless click away from being gone forever.

You will probably visit this page only a handful of times a year. Most people use it before a big change (a theme swap, a site rebuild, a developer turning over the keys), or right after building a useful form they want to share with another business they own. It is not a daily-use tool. It is a moments-of-truth tool, and the moments matter. Spending two minutes here once a quarter can save you a stressful afternoon recreating a form from memory.

You will not need any developer help to run an export or import. You will not need to raise a ticket. Two clicks for export, three clicks for import.

What is this for?

This page is for moving the definitions of your forms — the questions, the field labels, the settings, the email destinations — in and out of your site as a single file. Use Export when you want a snapshot of your forms saved on your own computer. Use Import when you want to take a snapshot file (yours or someone else's) and rebuild those forms on this site.

The exported file is a plain text file with a .json extension. You can open it in any text editor and read it — it is human-readable, not encrypted, not compressed. That makes it useful for sharing ("here is what our wholesale form looks like, copy it onto your site") and for reading old backups ("did we have a question about delivery preference last summer?"). Keep these files somewhere safe and labeled, the same way you would keep a printed receipt or a contract.

The Export side is non-destructive: nothing changes on your site when you export. You are just making a copy of what is already there. The Import side, on the other hand, adds new forms to your site — it never overwrites existing ones, never replaces, never merges. If you import a file that contains a form with the same title as one you already have, you will end up with two forms sharing a title and different ID numbers. That is intentional, and it is safer than the alternative (which would risk overwriting good data with stale data from an old backup).

Preview: Import and Export Forms — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

Good use cases

Backing up before a big change. You are about to redesign the site, change themes, or hand the site to a new web team.

Before any of that, take 30 seconds to export every form so you have a known-good copy on your own computer. If anything goes sideways during the change, you can restore the forms from the file in under a minute. The cost of running the export is two clicks; the cost of not having one is a stressful evening of recreating forms from memory or from printed brochures.

Cloning a form to a sister site. Your Store runs the main retail site and a wholesale-only site.

They built a great wholesale inquiry form on the main site and want the same form on the wholesale site. Export from the main site, log into the wholesale site, import the file. Done — same form, both sites. The forms now live independently on each site (different IDs, different submissions inboxes), but they ask the same questions in the same order, which keeps the brand consistent.

Recovering from a deletion. A teammate trashed your contact form by accident and emptied the trash.

Forms are gone. But you ran an export six weeks ago and saved it. Import the file and the form is back, exactly as you had it (you will lose any tweaks made in the last six weeks, but the form itself is recoverable). This is the single best argument for keeping a regular backup habit.

Migrating to a new SGEN site. You are moving your business from a smaller hosting plan to a bigger one, or splitting one site into two, or merging two sites into one.

The Import and Export page is the cleanest way to move form definitions across the boundary. Export from the source, import on the target, verify each form on the target's Forms list. The submissions do not follow the form — those stay on the source site — but the form structure transfers cleanly.

Preview: Settings saved — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

What NOT to use this for

Do not use this to back up form responses.

When a customer fills out one of your forms, that response is a separate piece of data called a Submission. Submissions live under Forms then Submissions, and they have their own export feature (a CSV download). The Import and Export page only carries form definitions — the shape of the form, never what people typed into it. If you export a form that has 1,000 submissions and then re-import the file on another site, the new form starts at zero submissions. The data does not travel with the structure.

Do not use this to import a form from a different form-builder tool.

Files exported from Mailchimp, Typeform, Google Forms, JotForm, or any other form tool are in a different file format and will not work here. The Import tab only reads files exported from a SGEN site.

Do not use this to back up your whole site.

This page only covers Forms. Pages, blog posts, products, settings, theme work, and media all have their own backup paths.

Do not use this to share a form with someone outside your team.

Exports include email destinations and configuration. If you do not trust the recipient with that, build the form fresh on their site instead. The export file is plain text and includes the email addresses you set as form destinations.

Do not use this to schedule automatic backups.

Exports are on-demand only. There is no setting here to auto-export every Sunday. If you need scheduled backups, that is a manual habit you build into your team's calendar.

Do not use this to merge two forms together.

The Import side adds new forms; it does not combine an imported form with an existing one.

How this connects to other features

Forms list (the page you came from) — every form on the Export tab's radio list comes from your Forms list.

Forms in Trash still appear in the export. If you do not want a trashed form included in your backup, restore it first, or pick a single form by ID instead of "All forms."

Submissions export — different feature, different page.

Form definitions go through this page. Form submissions (the actual responses) go through Forms → click form → Submissions tab → Export Submissions. The two exports produce different file types and serve different needs.

Trash and Restore — if you trashed a form by mistake recently, check Forms → All Forms → Trash tab first.

Restore is one click and brings the form back instantly with all its submissions intact. Import-from-backup is the second-best option, used only when the form is genuinely gone (deleted from trash or never existed on this site).

Form duplicate — if you only want to copy a form on the same site (not move it across sites), use Forms → click form → Duplicate.

That is faster than export-then-import and stays inside the same site.

Pages and blog posts — once a form is imported, you will usually want to embed it on a page.

The shortcode for an imported form uses its new ID number, not the ID it had on the source site. Find the new ID on the Forms list and use it in your embed.

Before you start

A few things to have ready before you click into the page. None of this is hard, but a minute of preparation saves a frustrating discovery mid-task.

For Export: know whether you want all forms or just one specific form.

The Export tab gives you both choices via a radio list. If you are not sure which to pick, "All forms" is the safer default — you can always pick out the specific form later from the saved file.

For Import: have the .json file already saved on your computer.

The file picker only accepts one file at a time. If your file ends in .csv or some other extension, the page will reject it. If your file is zipped or otherwise wrapped, unzip it first.

Admin role: the Import and Export button only shows up for admin accounts.

If you do not see it, ask your site owner to either elevate your role or perform the import/export for you.

A few minutes of time: most exports finish in under five seconds.

Imports can take longer for large files (30 seconds or more for a file with hundreds of forms). Do not refresh the page while it is working.

Stable internet: the Import side uploads your file to the site, which means a brief connection hiccup mid-upload can cause the import to fail silently.
A safe place to keep export files: before you click Download JSON File, decide where the file will live on your computer.

A dedicated Backups folder is ideal. Treat the file the way you would treat an important contract — somewhere labeled, somewhere you can find it again.

Where to go

From the dashboard, click Forms in the sidebar. On the Forms list, look for the Import and Export button near the top of the page (usually next to the green "Add New" button). Click it and you will land on the Import and Export page with two tabs visible.

If you prefer, you can type the path directly: your admin area on your site. Both ways land you on the same page. If you bookmark the page, the bookmark works as long as you are signed in.

Steps

1. Choose Import or Export

When you land on the page, the Import tab is selected by default. If you want to bring forms in from a file, stay on Import. If you want to take forms out into a file, click the Export tab to switch. The Export tab will reveal a radio list of every form on your site, plus an "All forms" option at the top. The two tabs are independent — switching between them does not lose your file choice or your radio selection (until you reload the page). You can flip between tabs as many times as you want before committing to an action.

2. For Export — pick which forms

If you are on the Export tab, the radio list defaults to All forms at the top. That is the right choice for a full backup, and it is what most people pick. If you only want to export one specific form (for example to share with a sister site), scroll down and click the radio button next to that form's name. Each form is labeled with its title and ID number — for example, "Wholesale Inquiries (id:42)". Picking a single form will export only that one, with its destinations and settings, into the file. You can only pick one option at a time on the radio list — if you want two specific forms, you will need to do two separate exports, or pick All forms and discard what you do not need on the receiving side.

3. For Import — choose your file

If you are on the Import tab, click the file picker and choose the saved .json file from your computer. The picker is restricted to .json files, so other file types will not appear in the list. Pick the file you want — it should be one that came from a Forms export on this site or another SGEN site. After picking, the file's name appears next to the picker as confirmation. If you picked the wrong file, click the picker again to swap it. The file is not uploaded yet at this point — you can change your mind freely until you click the Import button.

4. Click the action button

For Export, click Download JSON File. The file will save to your computer's Downloads folder (or wherever your browser is set to put downloads). The filename usually includes a timestamp so you can tell exports apart. For Import, click Import JSON File. The page will reload and show a green or yellow banner at the top reporting the result — for example, "Inserted Forms: 3" if three forms were added, or "No forms were inserted." if the file was empty or in the wrong shape. Wait for the banner before doing anything else. If you navigate away mid-import, the operation finishes server-side anyway, but you will lose the confirmation message.

What success looks like

For Export, success is a saved file on your computer. The file is plain text, ends in .json, and will probably be a few kilobytes per form. You can open it in any text editor and read it. If the file is empty (just [] inside) and you expected forms to be in it, double-check that you have forms on your Forms list and that you picked the right radio option.

For Import, success is a green banner that says "Inserted Forms: N" with a number greater than zero, and the imported forms appearing on your Forms list. Click back to Forms in the sidebar to confirm. The new forms will have fresh ID numbers (different from the IDs they had on the source site) but identical titles, fields, settings, and email destinations.

Preview: Settings saved — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

What to do if it does not work

The Import tab says "JSON file not found" after clicking Import. Either no file was selected (try again — the picker resets every page reload), or the file is too big for your hosting configuration.

Most files are well under any limit, but a file with thousands of forms can be large. If you suspect the file is too big, ask your site owner to check the upload size limit.

The page reloads and the banner says "No forms were inserted." The file is probably either empty (the source site had no forms when it was exported) or in the wrong shape (it came from a different tool, or it was hand-edited and the structure is broken).

Open the file in a text editor — a working file starts with [{"form_title": and ends with }].

Export gave me a file but it is almost empty. Open it in a text editor.

If the contents are [] (an empty array), your site has no forms at all on the date you exported. If you picked a single form by ID, double-check you picked the right one — the Export tab labels each form with both its title and ID number.

My imported form is missing some fields or destinations. The export was probably truncated or hand-edited.

Compare the file against a fresh export from the source site. If they do not match, redo the export from the source.

I cannot see the Import and Export button. You are probably signed in as a non-admin role.

The Forms area is admin-only. Ask your site owner to elevate your role or to do the import/export for you.

The imported form looks right but submissions are not being sent to my email. That can happen if the import included email destinations from the source site that are not valid on the target side.

Edit the imported form and update the destination emails to ones that work on your side.

Two forms now have the same title and I cannot tell them apart. Imports never overwrite, so if you imported a file that included a form with a title you already had, you now have two forms with the same title and different ID numbers.

Pick one to keep, trash the other. The shortcode for embedding a form uses the ID, not the title, so a duplicate title is only a human-readable issue.

Examples

Example 1: Your Store — backup before launching the new theme

Your Store is about to switch from their current theme to a brand-new one their designer just delivered. The new theme touches every visible piece of the site, so they want belt-and-suspenders safety on their forms before any of that work begins. The owner navigates to Forms, clicks Import and Export, switches to the Export tab, leaves "All forms" selected, and clicks Download JSON File. The file lands on her computer named yourstore-forms-recently.json. She drops it into a labeled Backups folder on her shared drive, sends a copy to her co-owner, and only then green-lights the theme work. Total time: about 90 seconds.

A week later the theme launch is live and clean, no forms were touched during the swap, and the backup file sits unused in the Backups folder. That is the win condition: a backup you did not have to use is the best kind of backup.

Preview: Bulk action result — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

Example 2: Your Store — clone forms to staging for a redesign

Your Store's web team is about to redesign the contact and wholesale forms. They want to do the work on a staging copy of the site so the live site stays untouched while they experiment. The web designer exports all forms from the live site (Export tab → All forms → Download JSON File) and gets a file named yourstore-forms-recently.json. She logs into the staging site, goes to Forms → Import and Export → Import tab, picks the same file, clicks Import JSON File. The staging site reloads and reports "Inserted Forms: 7." Now staging has the exact same forms as live, and she can experiment freely.

This kind of staging-to-live workflow is the most common business reason teams reach for the Import and Export feature. It also benefits most from naming discipline — each file should be timestamped and labeled with which site it came from, so the team never confuses a "backup of staging" with a "backup of live."

Example 3: Your Store — restore the deleted contact form

Two weeks ago, a teammate trashed Your Store's contact form by mistake and then emptied the trash. They realize the mistake the next morning when customer emails stop coming in. The owner panics for about a minute, then remembers she ran a full export six weeks ago. She pulls yourstore-forms-recently.json from her shared drive, opens Forms → Import and Export → Import tab, picks the file, and clicks Import JSON File. The contact form is back in 12 seconds.

The form will lose the tweaks made in the last six weeks (a small wording change to the subject line), but the form itself, its email destinations, and its general shape are exactly what they were six weeks ago. She re-applies the wording tweak in two minutes. Total downtime to recover: about five minutes once she found the file.

The lesson she draws from the experience: keep regular backups, and label them well. The next month she set up a recurring calendar reminder to run an export on the first of every month. The whole habit takes about two minutes per month.

Preview: Forms — after restore — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

Example 4: Your Store — share the wholesale form with their staging site

Your Store maintains a staging copy of their site where the team tests changes before pushing them live. The staging site needs the same wholesale-inquiry form the live site uses. The Your Store owner goes to Forms → Import and Export → Export tab, scrolls past "All forms," finds Wholesale Inquiries (id:42) in the radio list, clicks that radio, and clicks Download JSON File. She logs into the staging admin.

She goes to Forms → Import and Export → Import tab, picks the file, clicks Import JSON File. The form appears on the staging site's Forms list with a fresh ID. The team can now embed it on the staging wholesale page to test the flow end to end.

A small follow-up step the team takes: they edit the imported form's email destinations to point at the staging test inbox instead of the live inbox that was carried in the export. That is a one-minute edit and avoids the situation of a test submission landing in the real customer inbox.

Preview: Code snippet — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

Tips

Date your backup files. Browsers usually save downloads with a timestamp in the filename, but you can also rename them after download.

Something like yourstore-forms-recently-pre-redesign.json is much more useful three months later than forms.json.

Keep at least the last three exports. Storage is cheap, and you never know which version of a form you will want to recover.

A monthly export folder with a year's worth of backups takes up almost no space and provides a real safety margin.

Run an export before any big change. Theme swap, plugin update, developer handoff, site redesign — any of those is a reason to grab a fresh export.

Two minutes now saves hours later.

Test imports on a staging site first. If you are moving forms between live sites, do a dry run on a staging copy first.

That way you catch any "wrong file" or "missing destinations" surprises before they affect customer-facing forms.

Do not share files publicly. The export includes email destinations and could include internal notes.

Treat exports the way you would treat a customer list.

Review imported forms before publishing. Imports come in as Drafts by default — open each one, check the questions, check the destinations, send a test submission, and then publish.

That catches the small surprises (a stale email destination, a typo in a label) before customers see the form.

Preview: Forms by status — before and after import — a screenshot of this screen will be added here.

Frequently asked questions

Can I import forms from Google Forms, Typeform, or another tool? No. The Import tab only reads files exported from a SGEN site. Files from other form builders are in a different format. If you want to recreate a form from another tool, use the Form Builder to rebuild it manually using a screenshot of the original as a reference.

Does importing overwrite my existing forms? No. Imports always add new forms — they never replace or merge with existing ones. If you import a file containing a form with the same name as one you already have, you will end up with two forms with the same name and different IDs. Trash whichever one you do not want to keep.

Do submissions come with the export? No. The export file contains only the form's structure — its fields, settings, and email destinations. Submissions (what people typed into the form) stay on the source site and are not included. To export submissions, use the CSV export on the Submissions page.

How do I find my downloaded export file? Check your browser's default downloads folder. On Windows it is usually C:\Users\YourName\Downloads. On Mac it is usually /Users/YourName/Downloads. Most browsers also show a download notification in the top-right corner with a direct link.

Can I manually edit the export file before importing it? You can, but be careful. The file is plain JSON and needs to stay valid JSON. A missing comma, an unclosed bracket, or a stray character will cause the import to fail with "No forms were inserted." If you edit the file, validate it with a free online JSON validator before importing.

How to import or export your forms