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Export Your WordPress Data to a CSV or XML File with WP All Export

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Have you ever wanted an easy way to list out all of your posts or pages, along with their images where the report included the date and category too?

The WP All Export plugin makes it super simple to do.

Whether you’re doing a full content audit, or just need a list of your posts for organizing your social media strategy, I’ll show you how to configure the WP All Export plugin to customize a CSV file with all the info you want and export it to a spreadsheet for easy management.

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Transcript

First, install the WP All Export plugin. It has a super easy drag and drop interface to select the data you want to export.

Once you have it installed and activated, you’ll find a tab for it in the admin sidebar. Click that.

You’ll be taken to the New Export admin page where you can select the type of export you want to do.

Specific Post Type is already selected

Click the drop down to choose the type of post.

As you can see, it has detected all of the post types I have on this site.

I’m going to choose my blog posts.

It responds that I have 43 posts.

Now I want to customize the data I want in the report.

Click the blue Customize Export File button.

WP All Export makes this super easy with a nice drag and drop interface.

For this report, I want the post ID and Title.

But I don’t need the actual content.

So I can just click and drag that out of the window.

But, I do want to see the media in the post, like my images.

So, on the right, I have a whole list of Available Data types.

I’m going to click Media.

And then Images to expand that.

And I want the URL of the image.

So I’m going to click and drag that into the window.

I might also want to see the date that the post was published.

Click Standard.

And then scroll down to the Date and click and drag that over.

You can also arrange these data elements in the order you want to see them in columns in your spreadsheet.

And, I think it would be helpful to see the category too.

Click Taxonomy and select Categories.

Next, scroll down and click the drop down for Export Type.

If you select either of the Excel types, you’ll see a notice that you need to upgrade to the pro version of this plugin.

So, I’m going to select CSV, which will work just fine in Excel or Google sheets.

Then click the blue Continue button at the bottom.

You’ll be presented with more configuration options, should you need them.

And if you have a lot of posts, you may want to select the Split large exports into multiple files setting.

You can also give your report a name for reference. A date in there might be handy too.

When you’ve finished with your settings, click the blue confirm and run export button.

Now, I only had 43 posts, so it ran lickety split. But if you have hundreds or thousands, and a lot of image urls in each one, then it may take a while to run the report.

Once it’s complete, click the blue CSV button to download your report.

Depending on how you have your computer set up, you may see a dialogue box asking if you want to open the file or save it.

I’ll save it to my desktop.

And then open in Excel.

You can see the post ID in the first column.

Then the date it was published, starting with the year, month, and then day.

The post title.

And then any images that are in it.

When there is more than one image, they will follow one after the other, separated by the pipe symbol. So, if you have a lot of images, maybe you’ll want to sort on something shorter than the URL. However, the URL has the full path to the file folder, and those are organized by year and month. So it may help you locate it faster if you plan to delete the post and all of the images in it.

Now that you have them all in a spreadsheet, it should be a lot easier for you to sort them into posts to delete, rework, or use in focused resources pages. You can also use this to help you schedule posts for social media or other promotion as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial on the WP All Export plugin. Be sure to subscribe to the BlogAid YouTube Channel for more helpful tips just like this.

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About MaAnna Stephenson

MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.

This book could save you hundreds of dollars and months of frustration. Get it free with your subscription to BlogAid News plus my blog posts.
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Comments

  1. Mike Gantt says

    February 2, 2018 at 4:25 am

    MaAnna, thanks.

    I want to shut down one of my blog sites and stop blogging. However, I want to preserve the content on my PC for my own personal use. I could use this plugin, but I don’t think a spreadsheet format will be as useful to me as, say, a doc or docx format. (Putting a 500-word post into a spreadsheet column does not sound appealing to me.) Is there some other plugin you can recommend?

    P.S. I don’t know whether I’m right to think that doc or docx format would make the data most accessible. For example, I wonder if it simple enough to download the entire site to run as html on my PC just as it would appear on the Internet. (I am probably among the least tech-savvy of your readers.)

    Thanks for any direction you could give me.

    • MaAnna Stephenson says

      February 2, 2018 at 8:46 am

      Yeah, Mike, spreadsheet won’t work for that!! To be honest, I write all of my posts/pages in Google Docs or Word and have copies of them there. So, don’t know of a plugin to download just the content.

      As for downloading the site to run on your PC, if it is WordPress, you’ll need to setup your PC like a server using something like XAMPP. There’s more to it than just HTML. It’s not a non techie thing to do, and eats up a lot of PC resources.

      • Mike Gantt says

        February 2, 2018 at 8:57 am

        While I’m disappointed, I’d rather hear the hard truth than be given false hope. Knowing the hard truth saves time that would otherwise be spent on a lost cause. Keep dispensing hard truth, MaAnna – that’s what distinguishes the reliable consultants from the rest of the pack.

        • MaAnna Stephenson says

          February 2, 2018 at 9:00 am

          There may be a way to download your content, Mike. I just don’t know what that is. But then, I didn’t know about this little plugin until a week ago. So, don’t give up hope. Do more research!!!!

          I so appreciate you saying you enjoying hearing the truth, no matter what. Some folks say I’m not warm/fuzzy enough. Too bad. I am who I am!!!

  2. Sheri Prest-Herman says

    February 2, 2018 at 5:14 am

    This is a handy plugin! Thanks so much for your research and specific instructions!! VERY quick and easy from my end, but I had a similar number of posts as you did. :D

    I like the fact that it lists your draft posts as well. Let’s me know what content I’ve forgotten and need to work on or get rid of.

    Using this doc is a great starting point spreadsheet for things such as SEO work, etc. too! ;)

  3. Denise Wakeman says

    February 2, 2018 at 8:54 am

    Oh yes, I like this! Thanks, MaAnna.
    I’d love to get a list of all my posts, related media, pub date, etc. Very useful. Let’s get it on the list of action for this month.

  4. Arthur Art-Faux.com says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:01 am

    MaAnna Nice to know that Denise is there with you for your site as I follow her also. I use to have that plugin installed on my site but really never learned the proper way to use it and it was bogging down my site speed (along with others) and removed it. However with this post I see now how valuable it can be. My problem is I have posts that go back to 2004 and most of my content is rather large 500 to 1000 words in most cases which is mostly about “Art work” I have painted. Some is even instructional (step by step) My site is a mess do to experimenting and really need to get it cleaned up and reorganized Thanks for the great tutorial

  5. Lin Oearson says

    February 5, 2018 at 4:37 pm

    This looks very useful indeed! Now I need to dig out my installation disc for Office, and get Excel installed. Thanks again, MaAnna, for your verbally and visually clear tutorial.

    • Lin Pearson says

      February 5, 2018 at 4:38 pm

      Oops, it’s too late for me to be posting. I re-read my comment before posting and missed the error in my name! Duh!

      • Lin Pearson says

        February 7, 2018 at 3:01 pm

        Thanks for the tip about Google sheets. But I discover d, much to my surprise, that my laptop has got Excel installed! I just never had cause to use it.
        I followed the tute and installed the plug in and downloaded my data. Thanks again for the clear explanation and video. I followed along with no bother at all.

  7. New Blogger says

    January 19, 2019 at 8:09 pm

    Great Post!!

    I have a silly question about the export plugin since Im new to blogging. Once I export the data to a CSV file will it remove the post form my site? I can not find any information where it will but I want to double to check before I export the data. Then I’m looking at blank website.

    Thank you in advance.

    ~New Blogger

    • MaAnna Stephenson says

      January 19, 2019 at 8:32 pm

      Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging :-)

      I don’t think that’s a silly question at all!!!!!!
      The export will not remove anything from your site. It will just copy the info you select from the database and place it into a spreadsheet for easy reference.

      FYI, if you want to ensure you get comments past spam protection, you’ll want to get a Gravatar account and use that email when commenting. It will verify you are not a bad bot and will show your happy face next to the comment too.