Export/import dates not working

Hello! When exporting a set of posts from one Webflow install to another, the dates seem to go missing. I’ve seen a lot of posts of other people running into this issue, but I haven’t seen a simple fix yet. Any ideas? Here’s the error I see:

When uploading a CSV from one Webflow instance to another. Very simple content, nothing special, around 25 posts. No matter what I try, I can’t seem to get the dates to work. They aren’t auto-recognized and there doesn’t seem to be a way to manually map them.

Considering this is Webflow-to-Webflow, I figure I gotta be missing something simple here. Shouldn’t dates work with export/import?

I’ve seen a lot of posts/help saying that the dates are in the wrong format, but:
a) it feels like Webflow should export in the correct format, for itself
b) I tried 3 or 4 other date myself, and none seem to trigger the match

Those dates are essentially for internal system purposes only. They’re not useful as part of your content because the systems rules on changing them won’t match any logical content prioritization process.

Create your own date field, and use that for published, created, updated, etc and you’ll be able to import, export, and use them reliably.

Can’t they be set as the “Sort Order” when using a collection? My use case:

  • the is a collection with a history of posts, each with a unique creation date
  • this creation date is used as the “Sort Order”, with “Newest to oldest”
  • I’m moving the posts to a new site, and I need the created dates to maintain the correct order

Your solution is to manually re-create all these dates? There’s no way to include them from a previous export?

Again, I wouldn’t. They’re not designed for you to manipulate, as you’re seeing with your import issues.

Just create your own date file and import the original creation date there.

If you have troubles with date formatting, I usually go WF Export → CSV → Google Sheets → CSV → WF Import for maximum control.

I’m not really trying to manipulate them, I just figured a WF <> WF export/import would bring along the dates. Why else would the export even include date? If I make a new field, wouldn’t we need to manually set create/publish dates in the future, on every single post? That seems laborious.

Imagine a blog with years worth of posts, correctly dated. We’re just supposed to throw all the data into a new custom field, instead of a properly named field already exists?

That also ignores the many threads (and docs) that say those dates should work. So many threads say that with the correct format, those dates will be recognized (which I can’t seem to get to work, hence, this thread)

It’s data, it has some significance internally, just not for any form of website display.

You asked about the Create Date field, which might reliably reflect the date that the CMS item was created. You’d never update that.

Whether you can import that and override that internal date on a new record import is a separate question, but you’ve already found issues there, and it’s likely because the create date is internally generated at the point of item creation. Remember, these dates are for internal purposes, including internal publishing tracking.

Create your own field so you have control. The create date doesn’t change.

If you’re talking about Publish Date, that’s even more important, because it will update every time that CMS item publishes, not just the first time you made an article public.

I really can’t repeat myself anymore on this- you can contact WF support if you’re looking for their reasoning behind this.

All of my notes in the article above cover what you need to know and how to best approach it.