If your team has an existing knowledge base in a different product, you can migrate your existing documents, pages, and attached files from other tools and services into Outline. Workspace Admins have the ability to import content into Outline via the Import tool Settings → Preferences → Import.

Supported services

Outline accepts export files from Confluence and Notion, Word (.docx) files, as well as Markdown and JSON files from a separate Outline instance. Content imported in this manner is equivalent to an Outline Workspace, meaning a Workspace with Collections and nested documents.

Users may also drag and drop HTML, Markdown, and text (.txt) files directly into Collections in the app that they have write permission for.

Users can also import documents into the nested structure of a Published document using the menu … → Import document menu option.

Additional options

If your current tool allows for exports in HTML or Markdown, you can import those files into your Outline Workspace.

Please note that import fidelity cannot be guaranteed and some unexpected results may occur. Each product’s export output is unique and would require their own unique import tool for 100% accuracy, which isn’t feasible currently.

Alternatively, Outline also does offer an API to help teams import their content programmatically. Please check our our Developer documentation for guidance.

Moving between Outline Workspaces

JSON exports are recommended for Exporting/Importing between Outline Workspaces. This includes between cloud and self-hosted instances and vice versa.

A Workspace Admin can export your existing Outline content to a JSON file and import it into your next instance regardless of hosting type. Please also note the following when performing this action-

• There's a size limit of ~1.5Gb

• Authorship on articles is lost, so for this reason we recommend creating a user that is used specifically for this import– they can be named something like "Outline Importer" to convey this

• This import is content only, meaning documents and their attachments, so Workspace settings like Collection permissions, users/groups, etc are not yet imported.