Import and export
A template can be exported as a portable JSON bundle and imported into another organisation. This is how a template moves between a test tenant and production, between a partner and a client, or between two organisations in a group.
What an export contains
Section titled “What an export contains”The bundle holds everything needed to reconstruct the template:
The template body, meaning the HTML that gets rendered.
The design document, if the template was built in the designer, so it stays visually editable after import.
Every image the template references, embedded in the bundle.
An export holds the published version. Unpublished draft changes are not included, so publish first if you want them to travel.
Export a template from its row menu on the Templates view. The result is a single JSON file.
Exporting and importing need the templates capability, which the Admin and Editor roles hold and a custom role can be given.
- Open Templates in the portal sidebar.
- Open the menu at the end of the template’s row.
- Choose Export.
The browser downloads a file named after the template, and a message confirms it was exported with its images.
Importing
Section titled “Importing”Import from the Templates view. An import always creates a new library entry rather than overwriting an existing template, so there is no way to import over something by accident. If the bundle’s name is already taken, the new entry gets a numbered suffix rather than the import being refused, which is worth knowing before you import the same bundle twice and wonder which one is live.
- Open Templates in the portal sidebar.
- Choose Import.
- Pick the JSON file that was exported.
The new entry appears in the library, and a message gives the name it was imported under and how many images were renamed to avoid a collision. A file that is not a template export is refused with a message saying so.
Images in a bundle are held to the same rules as an upload: PNG or JPEG, and no more than 1 MB each. A bundle file over 20 MB is refused before it is read. An import whose images would take your library past its limits is refused as a whole, so nothing from it is stored.
If an image name in the bundle collides with one that already exists in the target organisation, the import creates a numbered variant and repoints the imported template at it. The existing image is left alone, and the imported template points at its own copy.
That applies to a designer-built template as well as a hand-written one. A design
holds its images by name inside the document rather than as cid: references in
markup, so those references are remapped in the document itself before it is
compiled.
A designer template that uses your own profile fields only imports into an organisation that has the same fields defined and switched on. Otherwise the import is refused with a message naming the field, because the design is checked against the target organisation’s fields exactly as a publish would be. Create the fields under Profile fields in the target organisation first. A hand-written HTML template imports either way, and a field the target does not have renders empty.
Built-in social icons are not images in the library, so they travel with the design and need no remapping at all.
What does not travel
Section titled “What does not travel”An export is a template, not a configuration. These do not come with it:
Role assignments. The imported template is not made active for anything.
Assignment rules, which reference templates by identity and belong to the organisation rather than to any one template.
Banners and footers, which are separate objects applied at render time. The template’s own switch for keeping campaign banners off does travel, so a template exported with banners off is imported with them off. The compliance footer switch does not: the export records it, but an imported template always arrives with the footer on, since turning it off needs an acknowledgement from somebody who owns the footer. See keeping the footer off a signature.
Version history. The imported template starts fresh.
Link tracking. The bundle records whether the original had it switched on, but nothing reads that back on import, so the new template arrives with tracking off whatever the original did. Switch it on again in the target organisation if you want it. The links themselves are counted per organisation anyway, so an imported template could not have inherited the original’s figures even if the switch had travelled.
Set those up in the target organisation after importing.
Using export as a backup
Section titled “Using export as a backup”Version history keeps the last ten published bodies of a template, which covers ordinary mistakes but is not a long-term archive.
For anything you want to keep indefinitely, export it. The bundle is a file you control with no retention limit, and it includes the images, which version history does not.
Exporting before a significant redesign is cheap insurance.
Downloading a standalone signature
Section titled “Downloading a standalone signature”A different kind of export exists for one person’s rendered signature: a
self-contained HTML file with images inlined as data: URIs rather than
attached.
| Where | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Templates view, Download button | The live new-message or reply signature for any mailbox you name. Still works while signatures are paused, so you can check a signature before switching delivery back on |
| The “My signature” pane in Outlook | The signed-in person’s own signature. Refused while signatures are paused |
This is useful for pasting a signature into another system, keeping a personal copy, or sending somebody exactly what their signature looks like. It is a rendered signature rather than a template, so it contains one person’s real details and no placeholders.