The principle
Lock-in is usually not a policy; it's an absence. Nobody builds a "trap the user" feature — they just never build the export, and after two years your data has quietly become hostage to a subscription. We think the test of a data-holding tool is boring and specific: can you download everything, in normal formats, without asking support?
So MoveMyWork has a one-button answer, and this page is the whole guide to it — it's short because the feature is.
The export
- Sign in and open Settings.
- Find "Export your data".
- Click it. Your browser downloads a single zip containing your clips and your files.
Text clips come out as plain text; files come out as the files you uploaded — the same PDF, image or archive that went in, not a proprietary blob. Open the zip anywhere; nothing in it needs MoveMyWork to read.
When you'd use it
- Leaving. The obvious one. Export, verify the zip, delete your account if you're going. Account deletion is a hard delete — clips, files, shares and logs all go (details on the security page).
- A local backup. Free-tier files are kept for 30 days; if something in your history matters long-term, an export puts a copy on your own disk on your own schedule.
- An audit. Curious what a clipboard tool has actually accumulated about you? The zip is the honest answer — what's in it is what we hold. That question and its neighbours are the subject of our clipboard security guide.
- A tidy-up. Export first, then delete old clips with a clear conscience. The copy on your disk means "might need it someday" stops being a reason to keep everything in the cloud.
Questions worth asking any tool
If you're evaluating a clipboard manager, notes app or file locker — ours or anyone's — the export questions are the revealing ones:
- Is there a self-serve export at all, or do you have to email someone?
- Does it include everything — files as well as text — or only the easy parts?
- Are the formats standard (text, your original files, zip), or something only the vendor can open?
- Does export require a paid plan? (Here it doesn't — it's on the free tier, like share links.)
A vendor confident you'll stay doesn't need to make leaving hard. We'd rather you stayed because copy-on-one-device, paste-on-another keeps being useful — and if it stops being useful, the door is a zip file.