How to save everything from your TPT store
There is no single button on TPT that downloads your whole store. Your sales reports export in a click, but your product files, descriptions, covers and previews have to be gathered by hand. Set aside one afternoon and you will have a copy of your business that does not depend on anyone else.
This is worth doing whichever way you go on Exclusive or Basic. Sellers have reported stores closed with no warning, and once a listing is gone you cannot get its files back from your TPT account. A backup costs you a few hours. Not having one can cost years of work.
What you can save, and what you cannot
| Piece of your store | Can you save it? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Product files | Yes | From your own computer or Drive |
| Titles, descriptions, prices, grades | Yes | Copy into a spreadsheet |
| Covers, thumbnails and previews | Yes | From your own files |
| Sales history | Yes | Download from Sales Reports |
| Tax records | Yes | Save your 1099-K and payout records |
| Reviews | For your records only | Screenshots |
| Buyer names and emails | No | TPT does not give sellers a buyer list |
| Followers | No | They stay on TPT |
The backup, step by step
- Make one folder, with one folder inside it for each product. Name each one the way the product is named on TPT. Everything below goes into these folders.
- Collect the files buyers download. The PDF, the ZIP, the link page for a Google Slides resource. These are the exact files attached to each listing.
- Collect the files you edit. The PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva or Keynote original behind each PDF. This is the one people forget, and it is the one you need the day you want to fix a typo or make a new version. For Google files, use File, then Download, so a copy lives outside Google too.
- Save the pictures. Your cover, your thumbnails and your preview file for each product.
- Copy your listing text into a spreadsheet. One row per product: title, description, price, grade levels, subjects, page count, file type and the address of the TPT listing. Open your Product Listings page from the store icon at the top right of TPT and work down the list. It is slow, and it is the most valuable hour of the whole job.
- Download your sales history. On your Sales Reports page, the Sales Details tab lets you download a report, and it exports as a CSV file that opens in Excel or Google Sheets. Download one for each year you have been selling.
- Save your product statistics. Open Product Statistics from the same store menu and save or screenshot the page. It tells you which products earn their keep, and that is the order to load them into any new store.
- Save your tax and payout records. Your 1099-K forms and your payout history. You will want these whether or not anything ever goes wrong.
- Screenshot your best reviews. You cannot move reviews to another site, but a record of what buyers said about each product is worth keeping.
- Put the whole folder in two places. One copy on your computer or an external drive, and one in cloud storage. One copy is not a backup.
What you cannot take, and what to do about it
TPT does not show sellers who their buyers are, so there is no buyer list to export, and followers cannot be moved. Help articles on TPT confirm you cannot even see who downloaded a free product.
The only version of a customer list you can own is one you build yourself: an email list that teachers join because you offered them something useful, on a site that is yours. If you do one thing after the backup, start that list. Our post on how teachers find a store of your own explains how.
Keep it current
A backup goes stale the day you list something new. Make it part of listing a product: when a new resource goes up on TPT, its folder and its spreadsheet row get made the same day. Then download a fresh sales report at the end of each quarter.
Why the spreadsheet matters twice
That spreadsheet of titles, descriptions and prices is more than a record. It is exactly what a store of your own needs in order to load your products. A seller who has it can open a store in days. A seller who does not has to rebuild every listing from memory.
At Up At Last we build and host stores for teacher-sellers for $25 a month, and the spreadsheet import is how products go in. We run our own teacher store, Literacy Stations, the same way. You do not need us to make the backup, and you should make it even if you never leave TPT.
Up At Last is not affiliated with or endorsed by Teachers Pay Teachers.
What to do next
- Run the calculator to see what Exclusive and Basic each pay you from January 1.
- Block out one afternoon this week and work through the ten steps above.
- Read what happens to your business if TPT closes your store.
- If you want a store of your own to put that spreadsheet into, tell us what you sell.