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SettingsDocument Templates3 min read

Importing and Exporting Templates

How to download a document template’s design as a file, bring a design in from a file, and what doesn’t come across.

Work Planner Team10 October 2026

Import and Export are in the three-dot menu of the drag and drop editor, the Simple editor and the HTML editor. Use them to keep a copy of a design outside Work Planner, to move a design between your businesses, or to bring in HTML made elsewhere. Text messages can’t be imported or exported.

Exporting a Design

  • What you get: A file named after the template, ending .html. Opened in a web browser, it shows the design as it prints, with the variables left as they’re written, such as {{customer_name}}.
  • What’s inside it: Everything needed to bring the design back: the design itself, which editor it’s from, the document type, name, description, page size, layout and whether it’s printed or emailed.
  • Unsaved changes: The file has the design as it is in the editor at that moment, draft included.

Importing a Design

  • Choosing a file: Import asks for an .html or .htm file: one exported from Work Planner, including files from the older template editor, or any HTML page.
  • It replaces the design: The whole design in the editor is replaced by the file’s, as a single step. Undo takes it back.
  • Only the design comes in: The template keeps its own name, description, page size, layout and way of being used. Change those on its details page if you need to.
  • Nothing prints until you save: The imported design is a draft, like any other change, until you use Save & quit.

What Doesn’t Always Come Across

After an import, a message says what came in and anything to check:

  • A plain HTML file: If the file isn’t a Work Planner template, or the template inside can’t be read, its HTML comes in as it is. In the drag and drop editor that’s one HTML block.
  • A different document type: A design made for, say, an invoice can be imported into a quote, but some of its variables may not fill in.
  • A newer file: A file made by a newer version of the editor may not come across completely.
  • Into the Simple editor: A design made in columns comes in as one column of text, and HTML layout a letter can’t hold is left out.
  • Into the HTML editor: A design made of blocks comes in as the HTML it prints.

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