New Feature: If your network needs an automated to back up all the workspaces on your network, please send your PBworks Admin this link.  PBworks integrates with Amazon S3, and your PBworks Admin can set this up to schedule regular exports for your entire network. 

Exporting your data is never necessary to maintain your data on PBworks.  For technical reasons, our backups are never made available to the public, or our customers, for any reason. They are only accessible by PBwiki Inc., and only in the event of a problem with our system.  We validate every deletion to ensure that a deletion is complete, and is never done due to technical error.

However, you may still want to export the contents of you particular workspace.  Deletions made to pages and files are permanent and cannot be restored for any particular workspace, so making an export is a good way to insure your data against an Editor or Moderator accidentally deleting data.

In order for you to make an export of your own workspace, just follow these steps:

Making an Export

1. Click the Settings tab of the workspace.  If you don't see the Settings tab, then you don't sufficient privileges to make an export of the workspace.

   
   

    

2. Click Export ZIP, on the left hand side.

   
   
   
   

3. You'll see the Export button with four options.  Click the "Generate" button next to the option which best represents what you need. 
   
   
   Note:  Generating an export for files, usually takes much longer than an export just for pages.  If you need a quick export of just pages, it's best to click the first "Generate" button (Pages).  The second option (Pages and revs) will export all the current pages and all previous revisions of those pages.  The fourth option will export all files and all previous revisions of files.
   
   
4. Once you click the Generate button, the Export will be queued to start.  This is not dependent upon the browser, since everything happens at the servers at PBworks.com.  You can leave the settings page and return later, and the export will most likely be done (depending on the size of the export).  When an export is in process, the status will change to "Generating export...". 
   
   
   
   Finally, when the export is complete, there will be a download link available.  Click the link and the ZIP file export will be downloaded to your computer.
   
   

Export Limitations

Currently, the export system will only export pages and files (if that option is checked) on the workspace.  Comments, workspace settings, users, and user security settings are not included in this export.  If you need these to be exported, you should set up an export with Amazon S3.  Additionally, the ZIP file format has inherent limitations (that your workspace may be exceeding), and so if your export is not opening properly, you may want to use the Amazon S3 export instead to capture your data.

Restoring a workspace page from an export file

To recover from an accidental deletion, you can restore a page from a .ZIP export by following these steps:

1. Open the .ZIP file.
2. Find the page that you'd like to restore and open the html file with a text editor (like notepad).
3. Select and copy all text.
4. Create a new workspace page.
5. Click on the "Source" button to access the workspace's source code.
6. Paste the HTML code into the source editor.
7. Exit the "Source" view to confirm that you copied and pasted everything.
8. Click on the "Save" button to complete the page restoration.

To restore a file, simply upload the file to the appropriate folder.