Skip to main content
Help Import and export

Backups

Full snapshots of a timetable you can restore later — including the ones taken automatically before something destructive.

A backup is a complete copy of one timetable at one moment: every teacher, room, group, activity and constraint, including durations, splits and locks.

They live in the timetable's own settings, under Backups.

Taking one

One saved snapshot, what it can do, and the count against the plan allowance — at the limit, Generate is disabled rather than quietly discarding the oldest.
One saved snapshot, what it can do, and the count against the plan allowance — at the limit, Generate is disabled rather than quietly discarding the oldest.

Generate New Backup makes a snapshot of the timetable as it stands. Next to the button is a count of how many you are using out of the number your plan allows. At the limit the button is disabled and tells you to delete one first — older backups are not silently discarded to make room.

Take one before anything you are unsure about: a replacing import, a mode switch, a large restructuring.

What each backup can do

Every entry in the list offers three actions:

  • Download — take the snapshot away as a file. It is a full FET project, so it opens in FET like any other.
  • Restore — put the timetable back into that state.
  • Delete — remove it, freeing a slot.

Restoring replaces the current state

A restore is not a merge. The timetable is replaced by the backup, and whatever was there is gone.

So before it runs, your current state is snapshotted first — automatically, into the same list. If the restore turns out to be the wrong one, that snapshot is there to undo it. A restore always leaves you with a way back.

Restoring a large project happens in stages, the same way importing one does, so a big timetable takes a moment and reports its progress rather than appearing to hang.

A restore is never refused for being too large, even though an import of the same size would be. A backup can only ever give you back what was already in that timetable, so there is nothing new to limit — and being locked out of recovering your own work is a worse outcome than any limit is worth. Growing a timetable past your plan is still prevented in the ordinary way, when you add activities.

The automatic ones

Some operations take a backup on your behalf, because they destroy data as part of doing their job. Switching solver mode is one — its confirming button says Back up & switch, and it means both halves.

These appear in the same list as the ones you take yourself, and restore the same way. If a destructive operation went somewhere you did not intend, look for the snapshot timed just before it.

What a backup is not

It is not a version history: nothing is recorded automatically as you work, so there is no "yesterday afternoon" to go back to unless someone made one.

It is also per timetable. A backup of one timetable knows nothing about another, and restoring it affects only its own.

Where to go next