Copying all the posts from one blog to another

This article is about how to copy all the posts from one blog to another, using Blogger.  There is a separate article about copying individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another.

(Last updated July 2022)

To copy all the Posts from one blog to another, you need to export them from the first blog, and import the file that was created into the second file.

If you want to totally replace the contents of the destination blog with the contents of the source blog, then you should delete the existing posts from the destination blog before you import the file.  (NB   Delete posts by going to the Posting / Edit Posts screen, and pressing the Delete button that is beside the post.   Don't delete the entire blog, or you will lose access to the URL).

Follow these steps to copy all posts from one blog to another

1  Log in to Blogger.

2  Go to the export tab from the  Settings tab, and look in the Manage Blog section

3  Click on Back up content.

4  Your computer will download a file.   For Windows users, it will probably be put in the My Documents / Downloads file.  Or your system may use another place, or it may ask you where to put it.   Whatever happens, you will need to know where this file is saved to.

5  Open the blog that you want to move the posts to
(You may need to log out and in again, or perhaps just switch to different browser or tab)

5  Delete (using Posting / Edit Posts) any Posts that are already there, but which you don't want in the refreshed blog.

6  Go to the Settings tab, and look in the Manage Blog section.  Click on Import content.  

7  Choose whether or not to automatically publish all imported posts.  
Only tick the box if you DO want the posts automatically imported.   If you don't tick it, the posts will be loaded, but with have status of Draft, so won't be visible by readers until you publish them.

8  Click Import .

9  Check that the import worked successfully, by looking at the blog, and also at the list of posts under Edit Posts:  are the right number of posts there? do they have the right labels?

10   If you chose to not automatically publish the posts, then you will need to work through them and publish (or not as appropriate.  To do this, click the Manage link in the Dashboard > Posts screen, select one or more posts and then use the publish icon to make them live, or the delete one to remove them from your blog:

Results

All the posts and pages from the source blog will be copied to the destination blog.

Many of the post characteristics will be the same as in the original blog.  This includes:

• title
• post contents
• published-date and time
• label(s)
• post-author.

Pages don't have a post-date, so they will all have a create date set to the date of the import, and will be at the top of the list in the Pages tab on your Blogger-dashboard

Any comments from the source blog will also be copied over - sometimes it takes a few hours for the links for them to be re-established properly.

The URL for each post will be based on the URL of the blog you have imported them into and the publication-date that the posts had in the source blog - for example:

www.YourNewBlogName.blogspot.com /2009/05/name-based-on-post-title.html

All statistics will be lost:  the post-count of your posts will be zero.

Any internal links in the blog will still point to the post in the old blog

For example this link points to a popular article in Blogger-HAT.  

If I export-and-imported this post into a new blog, the link would still point to the same place, ie the post in Blogger-HAT - not to the post in the new blog.

Any pictures, videos etc in the old blog will still be in the same place that they were in (Picasa-web-albums, YouTube, Google Videos etc).

If you have imported more than the number of posts that Blogger allows per day (currently 50 I think) then to make any more posts today you will need to complete the captcha-test (ie entering the letters in the funny-shaped word).   This will go away approximately 24 hours after you last enter more that the maximum-posts-per-day.

Importing to the same blog

If you try to import posts into the same blog that you exported them from, Blogger will not import any posts, and give you an error message.

If you do want to do this (eg to create a duplicate set of posts), then do the export, change some small detail of the original posts' title or date/time (you will have to do each on individually), and then do the import.

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Related Articles

The Difference between Posts and Pages

Moving individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another

Converting Posts into Pages

Moving some posts form one blog to another 

Deleting blogs and blog-posts