Hi Paul - if I understand correctly, you need a copy of all versions of pub(s) x. If there's aren't a huge number of pubs and/or versions, you can just select each version of each pub, one at a time, and export the objects through the Publication Report in the web UI. If you localize, you will need to export each language and version separately as well. Here are the steps:

To export publications from one Tridion Docs instance for import into another (or to simply have copies of for backup or other purposes):

1. Open Tridion Docs Content Manager (Web Client)
2. Navigate to the chosen publication
3. Select the publication version
4. Click the Reports button (middle pane)
5. Default selections are typically fine: Low, EN and no Compare option
6. Click Show Report button
7. Click Export Publication button
8. Click Close button and exit report
9. Repeat process for other publications to be exported
10. Navigate to the exported zip on the server, and save it to whatever system you have in mind. 

Having done this many times myself, I suggest putting together a list of everything you need to export and working through it methodically.  Good luck

Hi, thank you!! Originally I was looking for some magical way to export all objects for in a Publication's history (including Publication versions) in one operation (because I was feeling too lazy). But this is an elegant alternative and I totally concur, it's the only way to address the client's requirements in Tridion. Thank you again for the help!!

Paul M.

Hi Paul,

I hope you are doing well. One note, the “Publication Export” feature only exports a sub-set of the metadata. You can add any metadata you require to the export in the “Background Task XML Settings”.  Look for <handler eventType="PUBLICATIONEXPORT">. On example would be to add: <ishfield name="FAUTHOR" level="lng" />.

Hope that helps.

Hi, Paul. You got good answers here. I'm actually not sure how Tridion Docs is architected, but I believe that most CCMS applications store content objects as BLOBs, and revision and version information is preserved as deltas in the BLOB. This makes it extremely complicated to crack the BLOB for purposes such as yours. It would be great to just have one button to push, I agree. But with BLOBs there is an awful lot of sorting out to do. It would be interesting to hear from magicians like Mark Novembrino, who have done migrations while preserving versions (I think). But even then, I don't know if that process deconstructs the BLOBs, or merely gets them happily to their new location, intact.

Hi, Paul. As Jay mentioned, I've performed some large migrations. My process involved building custom applications using the TD web APIs to facilitate export and import of baselines, metadata, content objects, outputs, and folder structures. These were big projects with a lot of moving parts so it's difficult to provide a full sense of the process and details here in a few paragraphs. One thing that stands out for me in the discussion, however, is that there's no mention of a need to reconstitute the publications and their associated content/metadata in a new target environment. Do you have that requirement? With some minor tweaking of configuration (per Frank's suggestion) and using Elizabeth's export process, you can get the content exported. But there's no built-in way to rebuild the publications in another environment along with associated baselines, versions, outputs, folder structures, etc. That's where custom apps and the APIs are needed to get the full replication of your original source.