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Exporting your data

Last updated 2026-05-12

Everything you write in AnchoredTime belongs to you. The export feature lets you take a full copy of your data at any time - as plain Markdown files you can open in Obsidian, Notion, iA Writer, or any text editor. Your reflections, prayers, and Bible study notes are yours to keep.

How to export

  1. Open Settings from the side rail.
  2. Tap Export data in the Settings sub-menu.
  3. Review the record count shown on the page, then tap Download my AnchoredTime data as Markdown (zip).
  4. Your browser will download a file named anchoredtime-export-YYYY-MM-DD.zip.

Exports are limited to 5 per day per account. The export typically takes a few seconds regardless of how many entries you have.

What is included

The zip contains everything tied to your account:

  • foundation.md - your coaching foundation: mission, life context, season, and active pillars.
  • anchors/ - one file per daily anchor, including its completion history.
  • prayer/ - one file per prayer entry, named by date (e.g. 2026-05-12.md).
  • journal/ - one file per journal entry, named by date and title slug.
  • bible-study/ - one file per Bible study session, with all blocks (Observation, Interpretation, Application, Prayer) combined into a single document.

Frontmatter format

Every file opens with YAML frontmatter so Obsidian and other tools can index and filter your notes. For example, a prayer entry looks like this:

---
type: prayer
created: 2026-05-12T07:30:00Z
prayer_type: request
answered: false
scripture_ref: Philippians 4:6
tags: [prayer, open, peace]
---

# For wisdom at work

Lord, give me clarity in the meeting today...

The type field is always one of: prayer, journal, anchor, bible-study, or foundation. Use it to create Obsidian dataview queries or Notion filters.

Opening in Obsidian

  1. Unzip the downloaded file to a folder on your device.
  2. In Obsidian, open Open folder as vault and select that folder.
  3. Your notes will appear organized by type (anchors, prayer, journal, bible-study). The YAML frontmatter is automatically parsed and available in Dataview queries.

The files work equally well in iA Writer, Bear, Notion (import), or any Markdown-compatible tool. You do not need Obsidian to use the export.

Privacy and security

The export is generated on-demand, entirely in memory on our servers, and sent directly to your browser as a download. We do not store the generated zip anywhere. The content is exactly what is in your account - no extra data is added, and no personal data is stripped out. The zip is not password-protected, so treat it like any other personal document.

Restoring from an export

You can re-import a previously downloaded export zip at any time. The import is additive and idempotent - it only adds entries that do not already exist in your account. No existing data is overwritten or deleted.

  1. Open Settings from the side rail.
  2. Tap Import data in the Settings sub-menu.
  3. Choose your export zip file and tap Restore from export.
  4. A summary shows how many items were added and how many were skipped as duplicates.

Imports are limited to 2 per day per account. The zip must be 50 MB or smaller and contain at most 5 000 entries.

Only .zip files exported from AnchoredTime are accepted. Files exported from Obsidian or other tools will not import correctly.

Was this helpful? Still stuck? Email support@anchoredtime.com.

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