Trellis

Export your data

Download everything your church keeps in Trellis as one ZIP of spreadsheets and files, and what's left out on purpose.

Your church's records are yours. An admin can download all of them at any time, as one ZIP file: a spreadsheet for each kind of record, and the files you've uploaded. Only admins can do this.

Download everything

  1. Open Church settings.
  2. Scroll to Your church's data.
  3. Press Download everything.

It takes up to a minute to build, then the download starts. Keep the page open until it does.

If your church's account is closed, admins can still download from the page that says This account is closed. See Close your church's account.

What's in the ZIP

  • README.txt: what's where, and how many rows each spreadsheet has.
  • church.csv: your church's own settings.
  • records: one spreadsheet (CSV) for each kind of record that has anything in it. People, households, groups, meetings, attendance, gifts, funds, recurring gifts, lists, messages, serving areas and schedules, sign-ups, worship plans and songs, the activity log, and the rest.
  • files: what you uploaded. Group resources, worship files, the logo, images in your emails, and people's photos.
  • files-not-included.csv: only when the uploads are too large to fit. Each file left out is listed with a download link that works for seven days.

Every row has an id, and other spreadsheets point to it. A gift's person_id, for example, is a row in people.csv.

CSV files open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. A cell that could be read as a formula (starting with =, @, or a + or - that isn't a number or a phone number) has an apostrophe in front, so it opens as text.

Handle it with care

The download has everything the office keeps, including:

  • giving records
  • private answers to sign-up questions, like allergies (reg_sensitive_answers.csv)
  • group notes and prayer requests (group_memberships.csv)
  • how each serving day went (serve_writeups.csv)
  • children's allergy, care and pickup notes (kid_care.csv)

Keep it somewhere only the right people can open, and delete copies you don't need.

What's left out, and why

A few things aren't in the download on purpose:

  • Check-ons and care seasons. A leader's record of reaching out to someone, and who is in a season of closer care, are private to that group's leaders. The office never sees them, so an export to an admin doesn't carry them either. The date a leader last checked on each person is in group_memberships.csv, in the reached_out column.
  • Sermon drafts. A preacher's notes, and any files attached to the message, are private to the preacher until they first share them. What they shared is in the download (worship_message_versions.csv); their unshared draft and its files aren't.
  • What people sent to Trellis. Problem reports, questions sent to support and ideas for Trellis are between each person and Trellis, so they aren't in your church's download.
  • Pickup codes and check-in keys. A kids check-in pickup code or door pass is for one day, and it's deleted the day after. The keys behind family cards and Self-serve stations are left out, so the download can't be used to check families in.
  • The secret part of sign-up links. Each sign-up's private link is left out, so the spreadsheet can't be used to open someone's sign-up.
  • Trellis's own records, not your church's: the record of a closing, web addresses Trellis keeps from being reused, counts of how often members open their pages, and when a team reminder went out.

Card and bank details were never in Trellis; Stripe holds them. Your church's Stripe account keeps its own record of gifts and payouts as well.

Still stuck? Ask Silas

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