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Export and import

Exporting a project produces a snapshot file you can store, share, or import elsewhere. Importing brings a snapshot into your environment as a new project. Together, the two are the canonical way to move work between online and desktop, hand off a project to a different team, or back up before a major change. For the click-by-click flow, see the capability reference linked in Related.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson you should be able to:

  • Export a project as a snapshot file
  • Import a snapshot into a new project
  • Recognize what the round-trip preserves and what it does not

What round-trips cleanly​

PreservedNot preserved
Features (geometry, type codes, attributes, explosives, relationships)User permissions and sharing assignments
Layers and layer organizationPending access requests
Criteria selections and settingsShare tokens
Result sets and drawings (snapshots, not live re-runs)Undo / redo stack
Markup, to-do items, notes

The "not preserved" list is intentional — a snapshot has no idea what user accounts exist in the destination environment, so it cannot meaningfully replay sharing. The undo/redo stack is intentionally dropped because the operations on it reference internal IDs that do not survive the round-trip.

warning

After importing a previously shared project, you must reassign sharing and permissions explicitly. Plan for this whenever you hand off a project to a new owner. See Sharing.

Where exports live​

Export is on the project dashboard's Settings menu (gear icon) → Export. The dashboard tooltips reinforce the no-undo-stack caveat. The exported file is a .siter-snapshot (or similar) that you save to disk.

Pick a name that includes both the project identity and the export date — siter-fortexample-2026-05-15.siter-snapshot is far more useful in six months than export.siter-snapshot.

Importing​

Import is on the My Projects panel's settings menu. Pick a snapshot file; the imported project opens as a fresh project in your environment.

Verify the import succeeded by:

  1. Confirming the project appears in My Projects
  2. Opening the project and verifying criteria, default attribute preset, and feature count match the source
  3. Running analysis to confirm results match the source (small differences may indicate criteria-engine version drift)

Round-trip vs Copy​

Export-and-reimport can be used to produce a fresh project in a different environment. Copy produces a fresh project in the same environment. Pick:

  • Export/import when moving between online and desktop, or to a different organization
  • Copy when you want to explore an alternative inside the same Siter environment

Try it​

Export an existing project, then import the snapshot back into the same environment as a new project. Confirm:

  1. Features, criteria, and result sets all match the source
  2. Sharing is intentionally absent on the import
  3. The undo/redo stack is empty on the imported copy
  4. Live analysis on the imported project produces the same results as the source