Export to CSV

You can download every row of a data table as one CSV file, for a backup, for a spreadsheet, or to move it to another table.

Download a table

1. Open WPM Fields › Data Tables and click the table.
2. On the Entries tab click Download CSV. The button appears only while the table has at least one row.
3. The browser saves {key}-YYYY-MM-DD.csv, for example cities-2026-10-03.csv.

Only an administrator (the manage_options capability) can download. The link carries a security token (a WordPress nonce) for that table and your login, so a copied link stops working after about a day or when you log out. Open the table again to get a fresh link.

What the file contains

• The first row is the header: id, then the key of every column (not its label), then created_at and updated_at.
• One row per record, in ID order. The file is written in batches of 500 rows, so large tables do not use much memory.
• Values are the stored values: a Select column holds the choice value (not its label), True / false is 1 or empty, numbers have six decimals (10.500000), dates are YYYY-MM-DD, an Image or File column holds the attachment ID.
• Password columns are left out completely.
• The file is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so Excel opens accents correctly. Cells follow normal CSV quoting (commas, quotes and line breaks inside a cell are quoted).

Spreadsheet formula protection

A cell that starts with =, +, - or @ (or a tab or carriage return) would be run as a formula when the file is opened in Excel or Google Sheets. To prevent that, the export puts an apostrophe in front of such a cell: =SUM(A1) becomes '=SUM(A1). Plain numbers, including negative ones (-5), are not touched. When you import the file again the single leading apostrophe is removed, so the round trip returns the original text.

Use the file for an import

The export matches the import. To copy a table: create the new table with the same column keys, then use Import a CSV file. The header names equal the column keys, so every column is matched automatically; skip id, created_at and updated_at (they are not columns you can fill).

After a license expires

Your data is never locked in. When a Pro or trial license has expired:

• the Data Tables screen is locked, but
• the expiry notice on every plugin screen has a line Download your data tables as CSV: with one link per table, and
• the download itself keeps working for administrators.

See Trials, renewals and expiry. On a site that never had a Pro license (the free plugin) there is no export.

Errors

Exporting other things

This page is about data table rows. Field group definitions and values have their own tools: see Export and import definitions (JSON) and Moving field values.