The helpful folk at 37signals tell me that there are several ways of exporting all the files of all your projects in a batch operation. However, they won’t tell me what they are:) They suggest a forum user might be able to help.

We need to perform a backup our projects. In particular, we need to back up the files attached to each project.

Can anyone tell me how they have achieved this?

Well, you definitely can’t access files through the API last I checked, so I’m not sure what they’re referring to.

Also, unless they don’t want you to export your data (very possible), I don’t see why they wouldn’t tell you how to do it.

I’d be very interested to know the answer to this. You should be able to do this via the XML export feature – which in theory gives you all the info about your basecamp (including presumably attachments) – if you can work out how to derive attachment information from the XML. I can’t, and I’ve tried asking 37 Signals for guidance, but they’ve declined to answer this question (at all!) so far.

This was my thought as well but I’ve also been unable how to work out how to get a list of files so I can get my techies to build a routine based on this. Anyone from Basecamp willing to help out ?

I don’t see what Basecamp would have to lose by telling us how to export files to our own servers. As a business, we can not continue to take the risk of not having a backup of files and some of our clients demand contractually we do this. Our newish business already has about 50 projects running and it is unsustainable to have to manually download file by file. In past forums Basecamp has argued that as we have uploaded files to Basecamp we must already have a copy. They seem to forget this is collaborative software – we have several hundred users who can upload files and the uploaded files are dispersed across hundreds of servers all around the world. A logistical and version control nightmare.

It would be helpful to at least know if file export functionality is even on the drawing board for Basecamp. If so, what is the expected delivery time frame.

Just reading thru the Highrise API and came across the following under the Get Notes documentation. Now wouldnt it be nice if we could do this (Sing in a beach boys melody)

Has any one figures this out yet man if i could export messages and download zips of file areas that would be sweet! like some sort of system like easynews (if youve ever used it before) wherein you could select sets of stuff to zip and download ;)

(Keeps singing the beachboys :)

This is an incredibly important topic, and would definitely be interested in the answer. I believe that this issue could be a dealbreaker with this software.

I’d be really interested if this is possible also.

I think this may be the most important matter 37signals should work in… because it is always a concern for everybody to make COMPLETE backups of the information… the XML is Ok, but is not enough and requires an additional step for us to take the API and write some lines to read the posts and additional basecamp information of our projects.

You all are not alone… While it is not much help, here is the message I got from Basecamp support:

My message:

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Josh Miller <JoshM@haanmc.com> wrote:
> Can you recommend a good third-party website that makes a complete
> downloadable backup per project? We use Basecamp sooo much that we
> need to start archiving the files and messages in our internal system.
> If you could make a recommendation, that would be great. I understand
> that you don’t neccessarily have any plans for this kind of export.
> And, yes, I also understand that I can go here:
>
> http://www.basecamphq.com/help/general/#exporting_data
>
> but I do wonder if you have come across a reputible company that can
> help me further access my files easily?
>
> Josh
>

Their response:

Hi Josh,

Sorry, but we don’t know of any programs that offer this service.

For a more timely response, please use our support form to submit future help requests in lieu of sending a direct email:
http://www.basecamphq.com/help/support

- Sarah

I need this functionality as well. Kind of surprised that no one from basecamp has responded to this thread. If I am going to trust basecamp with MY data then I would like to know that I do have open access to MY data at any time, how hard would it be to dump a list of files via the api?

We ALL have waited and waited on this issue 37 Signals.

Clearly 37 Signals does not understand the business world on this issue. We all have risks that must be managed including data recovery. We have to be able to restore all data should a data service like 37 signals go out of business next week.

THIS WILL HAPPEN and you will ALL lose ALL your data.

We have been working on our own version of this very good and simple version of this program. It WILL allow people to backp their data by simply adding a table of all attachments that is easily read. Then by simply pressing one button in Access it will download all data to wherever you need it backed up.

This has to be the most ridiculous cross armed uhn-uhn approach to what has been aked for for years now by its customer base by any business that wants happy customers.

SHAME ON YOU 37 SIGNALS. Such a simple thing.

Hi guys,

We’re definitely interested in expanding our backup facilities. We’ve talked about a few ways of doing this including allowing you to download a mega zip file with all files from all projects. The problem, of course, is that this file would be humongous. Up to 50GB for the Max plan. So it’s not an entirely trivial thing to do.

Another option as mentioned is to list all the attachments as part of the export, but would require programming talent to convert into an actual backup. We’d like to move away from that and have backups be something everyone can easily use without being a programmer.

In any case, we’re looking into this, but I can’t (as with any feature) promise the whens and the hows.

I can say, though, that we’ve been running Basecamp for more than 4 years and been in business for almost a decade (so we’re not some fly-by-night startup that’s going under tomorrow). Your files are very safe with us. That doesn’t mean better backups is not a reasonable request, though. I can totally understand why people want to be able to get their data out and we want to help them to do so.