How to Move Your Journal to Another App: An Export Checklist
Before choosing a new journal app, export from the one you already use. Open the result. Can you find an old entry? Does it still have its original date? Are the photographs present, or does the file only point back to the old service?
These checks tell you more about a move than the presence of an Export button. A file you can read is valuable, but it may not be a file your destination app can import.
Match the export to the importer
- JSON or NDJSON: useful for structured entries and metadata if the destination understands the field names and format. Two JSON exports can have entirely different schemas.
- Markdown or plain text: easy to inspect. Check how dates and entry boundaries are represented, and whether formatting or attachments travel separately.
- CSV: can preserve commas, quotation marks, and multiline entries when correctly encoded. Inspect it with a CSV-aware reader; a visible line break does not automatically mean a broken record.
- PDF: useful for reading or printing. Recovering structured entries for another app may require a separate conversion.
- App-specific archives: check for a documented importer and an independent way to read the backup before relying on one.
The best format is the one that preserves what matters to you and works with the destination. You may want both a structured export for moving and a readable copy for keeping.
A checklist for the move
- Save an untouched original export somewhere backed up and appropriately protected.
- Record the entry count and date range shown by the old app.
- Inspect your oldest and longest entries, plus examples with attachments, unusual formatting, and dates near midnight.
- Test a small import if the destination supports it. Check time zones, paragraph breaks, tags, and duplicate handling.
- After the full import, compare counts and inspect the same examples. A matching count alone does not prove that dates or text survived.
- Use the new app for a while before deleting the old account. Keep the original export even after you have verified the move.
For example, an entry written just after midnight while traveling might appear on the previous date in another time zone. Decide whether that difference reflects correct conversion or a lost timestamp before changing the archive.
What KindMind's backup contains
KindMind downloads a self-contained HTML backup containing encrypted content and the information needed to unlock it locally. Open the file in a compatible browser and use your password or recovery key. Once unlocked, the viewer can download a plain-text copy.
That backup is not a promise that another app can import everything it contains. Check the destination's supported formats. Protect any decrypted copy as carefully as the journal itself, and keep an encrypted original alongside it.
A successful move is one where you can still read and locate the entries you care about, with enough context to understand when and how you wrote them.