Bringing your work across
Settings → Bring work across (on the Studio plan). Bring your client list over from wherever it lives now, then add the photographs gallery by gallery, at your own pace.
Nothing has to happen in one afternoon. Your galleries on the old platform keep working until you close that account, so your clients see no gap while you move.
What comes across, and what does not
- Comes across: your clients (name, email, phone), a gallery for each one named in your file, the gallery date where the file has one, and the photographs you download and drop in.
- Does not: past orders, favourites and gallery passwords. No platform lets them out. Past orders stay where they were taken, so take any screenshots you need for your tax records before you close the old account.
1. Get your client list out of the old platform
On Bring your work across, under Where are you coming from, choose your old platform under Platform. The screen then tells you which menu to use there for Your client list, how to download Your photographs, and anything **Worth knowing** first.
| Platform | Where the client list is | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Pixieset | Studio Manager → Clients → the ⋯ menu → Export CSV | Favourites and past orders do not come out; they stay where they are |
| Pic-Time | Contacts → Select all → Export | Sales history stays on their side — screenshot anything you need for tax first |
| ShootProof | Contacts → Export Contacts | They bill by photo count, so export before a renewal rather than after |
| CloudSpot | Studio → Contacts → Export | — |
| Zenfolio | Contacts → Export to CSV | Old galleries: check the originals are really there before closing anything |
| A spreadsheet of my own | — | A column for name and one for email is enough |
Every one of these platforms lets photographs out one gallery at a time. That is their limit, not ours, and it is the reason to start before you are in a hurry.
2. Check what the file would do
- Under Your file, in The spreadsheet you exported, choose the file you
downloaded. It needs to be a CSV file — the plain spreadsheet format every one of these platforms exports, and which Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets can all save.
- Press See what it would do. Nothing is added yet.
The What this would do panel then shows:
- how many new clients would be added;
- how many you already have — matched by email address and left exactly as they are;
- how many galleries would be created, empty, ready for photographs;
- how many rows cannot come across, and, under **Rows that cannot come across**, the line number and the reason for each (the first twenty). A row needs a valid email address to come across;
- any columns in your file that are not used.
The columns that are read
Column names are matched however the platform wrote them, ignoring capitals, spaces and underscores. Anything else in the file is ignored rather than refused.
| We want | It may be called |
|---|---|
| Name | name, client name, full name, contact name, client |
| email, email address, client email, primary email | |
| Phone | phone, phone number, mobile, telephone, cell |
| Gallery | gallery, gallery name, collection, collection name, event, event name, session, project |
| Date | date, event date, shoot date, session date, create date, created, delivery date |
A notes column is recognised but its contents are not copied, so add anything important to the client's record afterwards.
One file can hold up to 5,000 rows. For more than that, split it and import each part.
Dates
Dates like 2025-03-14 or 14 March 2025 are read as they are. A date like 14/03/2025 is read too, because 14 can only be the day. A date like 03/04/2025, where either number could be the month, is left empty rather than guessed — a wedding filed in the wrong month is worse than one with no date, and you can fill the blank in later.
3. Bring them across
Press Bring them across. You are told how many clients and galleries were added.
- The galleries arrive as drafts, so no client is emailed about an empty gallery.
- Imported clients are not added to your marketing list. People on a list from another platform have not agreed to hear from you here.
- It is safe to run the same file again. Nobody is added twice, and anything you have edited here since is left alone.
What you have brought across, at the foot of the screen, lists each import with the number of clients, galleries and skipped rows.
4. Add the photographs
Download each gallery from your old platform into its own folder. Then, under Your photographs:
- Drag the folders onto the box that says Drop your folders here, or press
Or choose a folder.
- Each folder is matched to the gallery with the same name and its photographs
start uploading. A count shows how far it has got.
The match ignores capitals, punctuation, spaces and a date at the front, so a folder called 2024-03-14_Alice_and_Rue goes into the gallery Alice and Rue.
Folders that cannot be placed are listed and left alone — nothing is uploaded on a guess:
- No gallery matches — make the gallery, or rename the folder to match it, and drop it again.
- More than one gallery could be — the name fits two galleries. Rename the folder or one of the galleries so there is only one match, then drop it again.
Up to 200 photographs are taken from each folder. Anything over that is skipped and counted rather than lost quietly — upload the rest from the gallery itself. If any fail to upload, drop those folders again.
Once a gallery's photographs are in, check it and send the new link from the gallery as usual. See galleries.
Your website
Moving a website too? That is a separate job with its own article: bringing your old site across.
Hundreds of galleries?
Open a ticket before you start. There is an order that makes it painless, and a few things worth knowing about storage while both accounts are live.