Moving content from one iPaper account to another – for example when changing agencies or switching to a company-managed account – can be complex and tedious, but sometimes necessary to gain full control and ensure smooth operations in the future.
This guide covers:
What does migrating content involve?
Migration means starting fresh. Flipbooks, assets, modules, and settings all need to be recreated manually on the new account.
The time and effort required depend on how much content you're moving. One flipbook is simple—hundreds take more planning.
Before we begin: Setting expectations
You can only migrate content from one account to the other if you have access to the old account, or the owner of the old account will download content for you.
If not, you’ll have to start your new account from scratch, as iPaper cannot download anything for you nor provide any information regarding the old account.
There’s no built-in migration tool in iPaper and, unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do to help you, besides providing guidance and best-practices through the process. Unless otherwise noted, each step of the migration is your responsibility.
Use only the steps that apply to the content you want to move.
Here, you’ll learn how you extract content from the old account, re-create content on the new account and, finally, publish.
Extract: Gather what you need from the current account
This is all about getting content from the old account, making sure you got everything you need to re-create everything on the new account.
1. Decide what to migrate
What do you want to migrate to the new account?
Which live flipbooks?
Which assets from the Media Library?
Which settings, modules and integrations do you want to replicate?
It can be very helpful to make a list – either in Excel or a text document – that documents all the content, assets and settings to be re-created on the new account. This will allow you to systematically migrate and check off when content is migrated.
If you don’t have account access, ask the account owner for direct access or to download all that you need from the list below.
2. Download historical statistics
Statistics can't be transferred to a new account. If you need them for future reference, you can download reports at either the account, folder or flipbook level. From which level you download depends on the data you want:
If you simply want an aggregated overview of all sessions on all flipbooks, download from the account- or folder-level.
Click the “...” icon on either a folder or the account in Flipbook Overview, and then click “Download report”.
If you want specific data - such as demographics, link clicks, products added to basket, etc. - you’ll need to download the reports from each flipbook individually.
Here’s our Help article on how to download Statistics as an Excel file for individual flipbooks.
3. Download PDFs of all relevant flipbooks
We recommend only migrating live, published flipbooks. If you don’t already have the PDFs for those, download them from the flipbook view.
Here’s our Help article on how to download a flipbook as a PDF.
4. Download assets from Media Library
Assets like icons, pop-up images, or backgrounds can be crucial for the visual presentation, brand experience and functionality of a flipbook.
Therefore, from the Media Library, you should download those assets that are in use or needed going forward.
Re-create: Set up your new account
You should have all you need from the old account. Now it’s time to re-create content on the new account.
1. Upload PDFs
Upload the PDFs to the new account. If relevant, set up folders to match your previous structure, as the folder structure affects the URLs of the flipbooks.
2. Upload assets to Media Library
If relevant, recreate the folder structure of the old account.
Please note that you can only upload up to 25 files at a time.
3. Re-create modules
Modules like Shop, News ticker, and Pop-ups must be rebuilt from scratch on the new account.
If you have access to the old account, open both the old and new account side-by-side and copy settings manually. To do this, you would need to use two different browsers, or two windows of the same browser with one of them being incognito.
If you don’t have access to the old account, you will have to start completely from scratch – but this might be an opportunity to improve your setup or strategy. We, at iPaper, are of course up for helping with guidance and best practices.
4. Apply settings
Account, folder, and flipbook-level settings must be configured manually.
These settings include branding, SEO, analytics, Modules and much more.
Again, as with Modules, a split-screen comparison between the settings of the old and the new account can speed things up.
Settings can be applied on an account, folder or flipbook level, and you should be mindful of where you are making the settings.Settings on account level influence all folders and flipbooks. Settings on folder level influence all flipbooks in the folder. Settings on an individual flipbook only influence that specific flipbook.
5. iPaper migrates Enrichment Automations
If you have an Enrichment Automation, we will have to migrate it from the old account to your new. We can also build a new Enrichment Automation configuration to match your needs and goals. You just have contact us at support@ipaper.io
6. Re-create manual enrichments
Manual enrichments, much like Modules and Settings, cannot be migrated directly.
If you use manual enrichments, we recommend simply to re-create those enrichments manually for the flipbooks on the new account.
Here’s our Help article on how to create manual enrichments.
For security reasons, you cannot load assets from another account’s Media Library. It’s not possible to re-create manual enrichments directly by using ‘Export enrichments’ from the old account as an XML file and then ‘Import enrichments’ to a flipbook on your new account. The downloaded XML file contains asset IDs relating to the assets of the Media Library on the old account. When you’ve re-uploaded assets to the Media Library on the new account, those assets will be assigned another randomly generated ID – and not the one that’s referred to in the XML.
That means the XML file won’t properly map to the new IDs in the Media Library, and no enrichments will be created.
You can change the XML file to correspond to the new IDs, but this is also a tedious and cumbersome process. In general, we advise you to simply re-create the manual enrichments again manually.
Publish: Go live on your new account
1. Compare old and new
If the flipbooks on the old account are still live, compare with the new ones to ensure:
- Nothing is missing or incorrect
- Branding and modules are working
- Assets are correct
- etc.
Fix anything that’s not as it should be.
2. Replace links and embeds
Update your website, emails, and social media with links to the new flipbooks.
Depending on your setup, you may also need to:
- Disable and re-enable Branded Domains. iPaper can also help with this, if you contact us at support@ipaper.io. Learn more about Branded Domain here.
- Update Embeds. Learn more about Embeds here.
- Update JavaScript API integrations. Learn more about JavaScript integration here.
3. Delete old content
If your old account is being shut down, you don’t have to do anything.
But if the old account isn’t being shut down – for example if an agency owns that account – then there are two options:
If you have access to the account, go in and delete the content.
If you don’t have access to the account, request the account owner to delete the content.
That’s it!
You did it! 🎉
Your new account is now the place for all your current and future flipbooks.
Migration can be tedious—but once it’s done, you get full control over your content and data.