If you're moving to Squarespace 7.0 from Squarespace 5, you can import content from your Squarespace 5 site. This means you can use all of Squarespace 7.0's features with your existing content, without having to start over.
If you're just starting the process of moving to our current platform, we recommend learning more about version 7.0 and version 7.1 in Squarespace 5 vs. newer versions.
Before you begin
- To follow the steps in this guide, you'll need a Squarespace 7.0 site. If you don't have one already, you can start a trial.
- It's not possible to import content from Squarespace 5 to a Squarespace 7.1 site.
- If a page on your Squarespace 5 site has the same full URL (example: www.yoursite.com/about) as a page on your Squarespace 7.0 site, change the slug of the Squarespace 7.0 page before you import. You can't have two active pages with the same URL.
What imports from Squarespace 5
Squarespace 7.0 imports all of your:
- Journal pages and blog posts
- Blog post comments
- HTML pages
- Picture Gallery pages
Squarespace 7.0 won't import other content, including:
- Files uploaded to your file storage section, and content added to headers, footers, and sidebars. You can add this content manually.
- Discussion pages, Drop Box pages, FAQ pages, Guestbook pages, Links pages, or RSS Widgets.
- Blog content using Markdown language. You can add this manually on your new site with the Markdown Block, which you can learn more about on our Squarespace 7 Help site.
- Information from your Squarespace 5 site's Traffic Overview. Learn about Squarespace 7's Analytics options and how to maintain your SEO ranking on our Squarespace 7.0 help site.
Step 1 - Import your content
- Log into your Squarespace 7.0 site.
- In the Home Menu, click Settings.
- Click Advanced, and then click Import / Export.
- Click Import.
- Select V5.
- In the Account URL or Login field, enter your login, which is the first part of your Squarespace 5 URL. For example, if your full URL is https://yoursite.squarespace.com, you'll enter yoursite.
- Enter your password in the Password field. If you don't remember it, visit Changing or recovering your password.
- Click Begin Import.
- A Success message will appear once the import is complete.
Troubleshooting
If the label says Failure, click Clear, then click Import. Try the import again, making sure of the following:
- Your account name is in the first field, not your site's URL or your email address.
- Your password is correct. The password is case-sensitive.
If you're still having issues with this step, contact our Customer Care team.
Step 2 - Enable your imported content
Your imported content will appear in the Not Linked section of the Pages panel, which you can read more about on our Squarespace 7 Help site. The pages are disabled by default. This means that they're hidden from your navigation menus, and visitors can't see them until you're ready to move and enable them.
Tip: If you don't see your imported pages in the Pages panel, refresh your browser.
To make your content visible, enable the page:
- Hover over the page title and click
next to the title to open Page Settings. - Check Enabled.
- Click Save.
For detailed steps, visit Moving from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7.0.
Step 3 - Manually add remaining content
Content that you uploaded directly to pages, picture galleries, or journal posts in Squarespace 5 have transferred to your new site. However, you'll need to add some content manually:
- Images added to file storage and then linked to on your Squarespace 5 site. These import to your site, but will disappear once you close your Squarespace 5 site. Learn more.
- Any other content that you added to file storage and then linked to on your Squarespace 5 site. Learn more.
- Content in your headers, footers, or sidebars. Learn more.
- Podcast files added to journal posts. Add them to blog posts as Audio Blocks. Learn more.
- Content imported from a blog using Markdown language won't display. Instead, re-add Markdown text to posts with Markdown Blocks.
Tip: In Squarespace 5, you can only download files in file storage one at a time. To bulk-download files, you can use third-party software or browser extensions like DownThemAll (Firefox). Since these are third-party services, they fall outside of the scope of Squarespace support.
Imported images
Images transfer to your Squarespace 7.0 site as Code Blocks. They look like regular images.
However, any image that you originally added to file storage, and then added to your page using its direct URL, will disappear if you cancel your Squarespace 5 site. To ensure these images continue to display, you should manually replace them. You may want to replace all Code Blocks with Image Blocks, as Image Blocks have more style and formatting options.
Note: If the image filename had a space in it, it may not import at all. To fix this, go to your Squarespace 5 site to download the original image.
To check if an image needs to be replaced:
- Log into your Squarespace 7.0 site.
- Go to the page or post with the image.
- Click the Edit annotation to open the page editor.
- Hover over the image and click its Edit annotation.
- If the code includes your V5 site's URL, the image needs to be replaced.
To replace the image, first download it from your Squarespace 5 storage. Then upload it to an Image Block:
- On your Squarespace 7.0 site, open the page editor.
- Insert an Image Block, and add the image you saved to your computer.
- Delete the original Code Block.
- Click Save.
File storage
To manually transfer content that you added via your Squarespace 5 site's file storage area, download them from file storage and upload them to the relevant pages on your Squarespace 7.0 site. For example, you could embed a PDF on a Layout Page.
Squarespace 7.0 doesn't have a file storage area. To add downloadable files to a page in Squarespace 7.0, upload them to links within text, navigation, and clickthrough images. To learn more, visit Uploading and managing files.
Sidebars, footers, and headers
Content from sidebars, footers, and headers don't transfer during the import, so you'll need to add this content manually.
These guides explain how to enable and edit these features:
- Editing sidebars - Enabling and editing content sidebars.
- Editing footers - For site-wide and page-specific footers
- Building a site header - For site-wide and page-specific headers.
Tip: Sidebar, footer, and header content also won't transfer between templates in Squarespace 7.0.
Next steps
Now that you've imported content to your site, you might want to try the following using our Squarespace 7 Help guides: