Hi,

I’ve been working at a web-agency that adopted Basecamp a while ago – the benefits of it are apparent and I wouldn’t like to go back to the days of lost files / missed deadlines etc etc…

Two of us are parting company to establish a small web design business of our own and wish to continue using Basecamp, but we’ll also be (amicably) taking some clients with us who have been converted to the BC way and already have a long history of projects / conversation on our current account.

Is there any way we can export the data belonging to these clients, and then import it into a newly established Basecamp account? I have read a little documentation on exporting, but haven’t seen any suggestion that the above might be possible.

If not, is there any way 37signals will be able to clone these projects over?

Otherwise I look forward to a fun weekend of cutting and pasting. I’m too spoilt. Any thoughts gratefully received.

Arthur – Serious Web Support

I believe there is not. I also believe some sort of API thing would need to be made, since 37signals doesn’t seem to be interested in importing Basecamp data.

I will +1 any thing that allows import as I also have some data in two different accounts as I picked up Basecamp for my business and ended up using it for my day job until we got our own account.

At this time you can’t move data between projects, but we know this has been a popular request and we’re thinking about clean and quick ways to do this down the road.

Thought I’d chime in on this topic as it has just been flagged as a potential issue with a business merger we are investigating.

• Two similar sized businesses are about to merge into one.
• Both have BC accounts with over 2 years of project data and time records.
• Only possible solution at this point is to continue to run two separate BC accounts post merge.

Not an ideal solution at all.

oscar, I would submit a support ticket and see if the 37signals people can take care of this for you.

I second the motion. My BC is ready to spawn an offspring, and it would be great to have a painless way of migrating some projects over to the new account.

Want to add my support for this change as soon as 37signals can do it. I’m in a similar boat. I’m the administrator of our account, and I’m leaving our agency to go in-house at the largest client, where we have several large projects in our Basecamp site. The remainder of the Basecamp projects and clients will stay with the agency.

I wrote to 37s about this, and they seemed to think that it was no problem, because “all” I have to do is limit each client’s access to the projects they can see.

They don’t seem to get it yet. We’ll need two separate accounts, two separate admins for the two separate companies, as they will be managed discretely from one another. And yet we have all these projects started when all were part of one Basecamp account. Losing those, or copying and pasting, seems like a terrible solution.

Can someone at Basecamp please, if you are planning it, give us an idea when the functionality of data migration might be released?

That would be nice, but they won’t, sorry for me too. They don’t give planning public. I can understand that a little bit, competision. But it’s very frustrating for my company and clients that that they won’t even give a hint. I’m active on other forums where I get a reaction like: good idea-in planning-in next build-no plans yet. I did some postings in basecampforum and watched it several times a day. But I’m gone stop posting and stop reagular watching others postings because it’s only frustration to see all the people ask about new functions they need and mostly don’t get any answers.
I know the people of 37 signals are watching the forum, because the respont quick on bugs (thats good!), but they should be a little bit more open about some new things coming. For example about splitting one account into two accounts and exporting and importing items and projects. Those are things witch are essentional for companies and, sorry to say so, it’s stupid also because I also want to split one account into two accounts and that means two companies paying 49 dollar each month in stead of one company.
My company and my clients are very happy with Basecamp, but also frustated because we are hoping and waiting for a few new essential things to come and we have no idea iff and when it will come.

Wilco

This seems like something I would have expected was already available. At least a way to export from one account and then import into another one. We have two accounts that need to be merged into one. Sucks that we cant do it right now.

I second or third the suggestion that project import/export become a feature. It’s been almost a year since Jason Fried’s post in this very thread that “we’re thinking about clean and quick ways to do this down the road.”

Just wanted to put my vote in for merging project, too. Thanks.