Import and export articles

There is no button to import articles from a spreadsheet or another help center product, and none to download them as a file. Both can be done through the helpdesk's REST API, which a developer, or a tool you already use with the API, can call. For a handful of articles, copying and pasting into the editor is quicker.

Copy a few articles by hand#

1. Open the article on your old help center and select its text, headings and lists.

2. In the new article, paste it into the body. Styling from the old site is removed and the structure is kept: headings, bold, links, lists and quotes.

3. Check images: pictures pasted from another site still point at that site. Download them and insert them again with the image button, so they are stored in your helpdesk and survive the old site closing.

4. Set the category and excerpt, then publish.

Import many articles with the API#

You need an API key, made by an admin in Settings > REST API; see The REST API and API keys. The help center's id is in its settings address.

1. Create the categories with POST /api/help-centers/{id}/categories, giving each a name.

2. For each article, send POST /api/help-centers/{id}/articles with:

3. To add another language to an article, send PUT /api/help-centers/{id}/articles/{articleId} with the same fields and the other language.

Images in the HTML that point at your old help center keep loading from there until that site goes away. Upload important ones again in the editor.

Moving from Gorgias or Zendesk: the importers on Settings > Imports copy tickets, customers, tags and macros, but not help center articles. Use the API or copy them by hand. See Move from Gorgias.

Export articles#

GET /api/help-centers/{id}/articles lists the articles with their titles, excerpts and HTML in each language, and accepts language, category_id, state and search to narrow the list. GET /api/help-centers/{id}/categories lists the categories in order.

The owner's full data export holds tickets, customers, macros, rules and the help center's statistics, but not the articles themselves; read them through the API.