WordPress – How to Export / Import Post Comments

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to export / import WordPress post comments.

This is really useful when you want to export comments from your live site and want to import them into your local site to try changes and new configurations. You can easily keep your local site up to date with the live site.

We’ll use the WP Sheet Editor plugin, which allows you to view and manage post comments, product reviews, and any other kind of review that uses the WordPress comments system.

You can do advanced searches using any field as a search parameter, edit thousands of comments with a few clicks, export comments and import them easily.

Once you install and activate the plugin, go to WP Sheet Editor > Edit Comments.

You’ll see all the comments and reviews on the spreadsheet. Each comment/review is a row and every field is a column.

Now you can follow the steps in the sections below to export and import post comments.

How to export WordPress post comments

Since there may be other types of contents on your website that use the WordPress comments system to store reviews, comments, etc., we need to filter the post comments only. That’s why we’ll use the Search tool to find the post comments only and display them on the spreadsheet.

Now you need to select these values to find the post comments only in order to export them:

Optional – Export post comments after a specific date

If you want to export the comments created after April 27, for example, you need to select these values:

• Post type: Posts (post)
• Click Enable advanced filters
• Field: Date (comment_date)
• Operator: >
• Value: Enter the date you exported the post comments the last time.
• Click Run Search.

Once your post comments have been filtered and displayed on the spreadsheet, click Export on the top toolbar to download the post comments to a CSV file.

Now select the following values to configure the export:

• What columns do you want to export: Click Select all
• Which rows do you want to export: All the rows from my current search
• What app will you use to edit this file (optional): Select any of the available apps.
• Name of this export (optional): You can give this export a name for future exports.
• Click Start new export to download the post comments to a CSV file.

Once you do that, a CSV file containing all your post comments will be downloaded to your computer.

These are our exported comments:

If you’re migrating to another site or have edited the CSV file, you can import the comments easily.

How to import WordPress post comments

WP Sheet Editor contains an Import tool that allows you to upload the CSV file containing your WP post comments.

Now you need to select the file you’ll import into your site:

• Source: CSV file from my computer
• Click Select File and choose the file from your computer.
• Click Next.

You will see some columns that the plugin will suggest you map between the CSV file and the WordPress comments database.

You should select Ignore this column on the following fields:

• Parent comment
• User ID of the Author
• Post ID
• Post Title
• Ver Post

You can map the other columns, but ignore these.

Once done, click Next.

Now these values to configure how the comments will be imported:

• Do you want to update or create items: It’s important to understand the options you have to import your post comments:
  • Create new items and update existing items: Use this option to import new comments and update existing comments. In this case, you need to match the existing comments using the DATE field both in the CSV Field and the WordPress Field.
  • Only create new items, ignore existing items: Use this option to only import the missing comments and ignore the existing ones.
  • Import all rows as new: Use this option if you want to create comments only.
  • Update existing items, ignore new items: Use this option if you want to only update existing comments and ignore (not import) new comments.
• Click Next.

Finally, you’ll see a preview of how the post comments will look imported.

If everything looks fine, click The preview is fine, start import to complete the import process.

Once the comments are imported, you’ll see the changes and the new comments displayed on the spreadsheet:

With WP Sheet Editor, you can easily export WordPress comments to a CSV file. You can open and edit the comments in the CSV file using Excel, Google Sheets, or any other CSV editor. Besides, you can also import comments to apply changes to existing comments and create new comments on your site.