Exporting your data

Your work isn't locked in here. You can download everything you've contributed as one zip file, whenever you like, from Settings → Your data.

How it works

1. Go to Settings → Your data and choose Export my data.
2. We prepare your export in the background. It's usually ready within a few minutes, and you can leave the page while you wait.
3. We email you when it's ready. Come back to Your data and choose Download.

The download link lasts 24 hours after your export is ready. After that the file is deleted. You can start a new export whenever you like, up to three in 24 hours.

The limits

• One export at a time. While one is being prepared, you can't start another.
• Three exports in 24 hours. The page tells you when you can start the next one. An export that fails doesn't count.
• A new export replaces the old one. When a new export is ready, the previous download stops working.

Only you can download your export. You need to be signed in, and the link doesn't work for anyone else, even if you share it.

What's in the zip

• Every hike you maintain, as your current draft, including anything you haven't published yet.
• Every hike you created that someone else now maintains, as the version the public sees. If that hike has no public version right now, it's listed in the export without a file, because its current draft belongs to its new maintainer.
• Every photo you've uploaded: the photos on your hikes and their stops, your photos on other people's hikes, and your covers. That includes photos that aren't on a hike right now, such as ones you took off a stop or ones left when you deleted a stop or a whole hike. Photos you deleted aren't included, and neither are photos someone else uploaded, even when they're on your hike.
• Every historic marker you recorded that you haven't deleted, with its photos.
• organizations.json, if you belong to any organizations or have asked to join one: each organization's name, type and website, your role in it, and the hikes you created for it.
• manifest.json, a list of every hike and photo with each photo's caption, credit and license.
• README.txt, a plain-language guide to the folders.

Each hike is a hike.json file in the HistoricTrails Hike Format v3, the same format Importing a hike uses. It carries the hike's code, its trail start and trail end, and lists every photo on the hike and its stops as a link to the photo on the site, in the order they're shown, including photos other people added. You can import it back here, as a new hike or, for a hike you maintain, to update it, or use it with any tool that reads the format. A hike built on the map can be bigger than the import limits, so a large one may need trimming before it can be imported again.

Where your photos are

Each photo is in the zip once, however many places it's on.

• A photo on a hike is in that hike's folder, under photos, sorted by stop. Hikes you created or maintain are under hikes; anyone else's are under other-hikes.
• A photo that's on more than one hike or stop is in the folder of one of them. Its entry in manifest.json lists every place it's on, under placements. The hike and stop shown beside the photo in the manifest are the folder its file is in.
• A photo that isn't on a hike right now is in photos-not-on-a-hike. You can put it on a hike again from Your photos; see Photos and licensing.

Your markers

The markers you recorded are under markers. The file markers/finds.json lists each one: the marker's title, the name and words you typed for it (if you added any), the hike and the nearest stop when it is on one, when you found it, where you were when you recorded it, and whether it shows on your profile. A marker still waiting on your phone to be sent isn't in the export until it has been sent. Each marker's photos, as the original files, are in their own folder beside it.

A hike someone else maintains is named in your export only by what the public can see. If it isn't published, its folder is just the hike's code, with no title and no stop names.

About your photos

Photos are the original files you uploaded, exactly as they were, whenever we still have them; otherwise you get the copy shown on the site. A cover or souvenir image on your hike that we can't confirm you uploaded, such as one added by an administrator or a previous maintainer, is always the copy shown on the site. An original can include information your camera stored, such as where the photo was taken. We remove that from the copy shown on the site, but it's still in your original, so keep the zip private if that matters to you.

If something goes wrong

If an export fails, the page says so and you can try again. If your export is too large to prepare, the page lets you know and you can contact us to get your data another way.