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Transfer WPML Translations from one Site to Another with WP Sheet Editor

Dario
Updated
May 24, 2022

WP Sheet Editor plugin allows you to easily export and import WPML translations of any content. This includes products, regular posts and pages, as well as custom post types.

Watch this short video to see how to easily export and import WPML post translations using WP Sheet Editor:

Video Guide:

How WP Sheet Editor Works

WP Sheet Editor displays all your site’s content in an easy-to-use spreadsheet in the WordPress admin. It helps you manage your WordPress content effectively:

  • Make advanced searches
  • Bulk edit
  • Export and import
  • Bulk duplicate
  • Edit using a spreadsheet interface

WP Sheet Editor provides native compatibility with WPML and automatically handles the WPML translation relationships. So, the translations that you export and import using WP Sheet Editor will be saved correctly.

Getting Started

Start by installing and activating the following plugins:

If you’re new to WPML, check out our Getting Started Guide. It quickly walks you through different translation options you can use.

How Exporting and Importing with WP Sheet Editor Works

Usually, you will have two sites:

  • The source site – from which you’ll export the posts with translations
  • The target site – where you’ll import the posts.

In our example, the Source Site has some English posts, and there are also Spanish translations for them.

To view the posts spreadsheet, go to WP Sheet Editor → Edit posts.

All your posts display as rows and the fields as columns. The spreadsheet displays the content according to the WPML language you select on the WordPress top bar.

Here’s a spreadsheet displaying the posts in English:

And here you can see the spreadsheet displaying the Spanish posts.

There are no posts on the target site yet.

Migrating Post Taxonomies Before Migrating Posts

You need to migrate the taxonomies first, such as categories and tags, because you need to have the translated categories and tags in place before importing the post translations. This way, the translated categories will be assigned to the post translations during import, maintaining the proper term relationships.

Use the following steps to migrate the post categories.

First, you export categories from the source site:

  1. Go to WP Sheet Editor → Edit categories, tags, attributes, taxonomies.
  2. Click Edit Categories.
  1. Select the WPML language you need. In this example, we do the English categories first.
  2. Click Export on the top toolbar.
  1. Select the columns you’ll export and the app you’ll use to edit the CSV.
  2. Click to start the export.

A CSV file containing the English categories will download to your computer.

Now, you can import the taxonomies into the target site:

  1. Open the categories spreadsheet and select the language.
  2. Click Import on the top toolbar.
  1. Select the CSV file from your computer and click Next.
  1. Click Import all the columns.
  1. In the next step, you select whether to update or create items. Choose the Import all rows as new option and click Next.

You will now see a preview of the info on the spreadsheet. Click The preview is fine, start import and the information will be uploaded.

Important: Repeat these same steps for any other language you want to migrate.

Here’s the spreadsheet containing the imported categories:

How to Migrate Your WordPress Posts

Now that you have migrated the categories and their translations, you’re ready to migrate the WordPress posts because the categories are in the target site already.

Follow these steps on the source site:

  1. Go to WP Sheet Editor → Edit posts.
  2. Select the WPML language you need. In this example, we export the English posts first.
  3. Click Export on the top toolbar.
  1. Select the columns you want to export and the app you’ll use to edit the CSV.
  2. Click to start the export.

A CSV file containing the English posts will download to your computer.

Important: Change the language and repeat the process to export translations in other languages.

Follow these steps on the target site:

  1. Open the posts spreadsheet and select the language.
  2. Click Import on the top toolbar.
  1. Select the CSV file containing the English posts from your computer and hit Next.
  1. Click Import all the columns.
  1. In the next step, you select whether to update or create items. Choose the Import all rows as new option and click Next.

You will now see a preview of the info on the spreadsheet. Click The preview is fine, start import and the information will be uploaded.

Now, the English posts have been imported, and the categories have been assigned correctly.

Important: Repeat these steps to import posts in other languages.

Here you can see the Spanish posts, and the categories have been assigned correctly.

And that’s it, you successfully migrated all categories and posts from one website to the other. 

Known Issues

There are no unresolved compatibility issues between this plugin and WPML. Search all known issues.