How to Backup a Google Tag Manager Container

You may have heard about a number of Google Tag Manager containers which temporarily disappeared recently. Google, to their credit, rectified the situation quickly and the containers were restored again within a number of hours.

This was a very rare occurrence but for those few uncertain hours, it was reassuring to know that we had a backup of all of our client’s containers so we could easily restore them in the worst case scenario.

Of course, it’s always good practice to keep backups of your work – whether it’s your Google Tag Manager container and all your tags, or any other digital data that is of importance to your business.

We’ve put together a quick guide below which explains how to backup your GTM containers – if you haven’t done it already, why not add regular backups to your work flow and do it on a weekly (or at least monthly) basis?
Exporting your Google Tag Manager Container
1.  Click on Admin -> Export Container.

2. Select your ‘Default Workspace’ – this will contain the most recent version of your tags, triggers etc.

3. Click on ‘Export’ and save your exported .json file somewhere safe!

That’s your container backed up – all of your tags, triggers and variables! It’s a really simple process which may save you hours of work recreating tags again, should your container happen to go missing because of a technical (or human!) error in the future.

Should you need to restore a backup, you’ll find the ‘Import Container’ option in your Admin, immediately above the ‘Export Container’ button.  The whole import process is fairly self explanatory – but if you’re having any problems, feel free to leave a comment below or get in touch with us directly.