Introduction to backups

Available for

  • Pro
  • Business

Platforms

  • Web
  • macOS
  • Windows 10

Never worry about losing your projects, tasks, and comments. Todoist automatically creates backup files of all your current projects, so you can easily restore a project at any time.

Backups are created once a day on days that you’ve logged in to your Todoist and made any changes. As you use Todoist, a total of 21 backups can be stored on your account. Whenever a new backup is created, the oldest backup automatically gets deleted.

All of your data is safe and secure in Todoist. If you'd like to learn more, refer to our security policy.

Warning

Backups are only created from the day your account is upgraded from the free plan to a Todoist Pro or Business plan.

Therefore, if you delete a project while on the free plan, and then upgrade to Pro or Business, you won't be able to find that project in your backups.

Download a backup

  1. Click your avatar in the top-left.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Open the Backups tab.

    If you've enabled two-factor authentication for your account, you'll need to get a code from your authentication app to download the backup. Learn more.

  4. Click download next to a backup. This downloads a ZIP file containing CSV files for each of your current projects (completed tasks and archived projects aren't included).
  5. Extract the contents of the ZIP file.

Keita · Customer Experience Lead

Click Create Backup at the top of your backups tab to manually create a backup of all of your active projects.

Restore a backup

  1. Create a new project.
  2. Click the three dots icon at the top-right of the project.
  3. Select Import from CSV.
  4. Choose or drag the CSV file from the folder extracted from the ZIP file. Check that it corresponds to the project you want to restore.

All the active tasks, due dates, comments, and files from the backed-up project will be added to the new project.

Note

The start date of a recurring due date isn't saved in the backup. For example, if you have a task with the recurring due date every year starting January 31, and you export a backup where it's included, that task's due date will be changed to every year.

What's included in backups

Every Todoist backup includes the following data:

  • Active projects and active tasks
  • Due dates and due times
  • Recurring due dates but excluding start dates
  • 500 comments per task
  • Links to attachments

Restore a deleted task

If you've accidentally deleted a task or project while using the free plan, you won't be able to restore it from a backup.

However, if you've upgraded to a Pro or Business plan, here's how to restore the task from a project backup:

  1. Log in to your Todoist account at https://app.todoist.com/app
  2. Download and open a backup.
  3. Find the CSV file of the project that contains the task you need to restore.
  4. Create a new project.
  5. Import the CSV file to the new project. It becomes a duplicate of the original project.
  6. Move the recovered task to the original project.
  7. Delete the new project where you imported the CSV file.

FAQ

Backups can store up to 500 comments per task.