.exlib Archives
An .exlib archive is the portable, self-describing form of your library — everything you'd need to move it to another machine, keep as a snapshot, or hand to a teammate, packed into one file.
What an .exlib archive holds
A single .exlib file carries your folders, expressions, pseudo rigs (with their .ffx binaries), tags, packs, and ordering — the whole shape of your library, not just the expression text.
An export that fails partway through can't leave you with a half-written file. Binary rig data round-trips byte-for-byte through export and import.
Exporting the whole library
Settings → Backup & restore → Back up / export library… writes your entire library to one .exlib file, wherever you choose to save it. See Autobackup & Restore for what that button does and how it relates to the automatic launch rotation.
Exporting one folder
You don't have to export everything to hand off part of your library. A folder row's hover cluster in the Library's left-hand column carries its own Export action, and the folder's right-click menu offers the same entry — both write just that folder to its own .exlib archive, in the same format and with the same export glyph as the full-library export, scoped to that one folder.
Importing is additive only
Import / restore archive… reads an .exlib file back in — the same button, and the same pipeline, whether the file came from your own export, a teammate, or the automatic-backup list. Import is additive only: nothing already in your library is ever removed by it. The incoming file is parsed and classified in full before anything is written to disk, so nothing lands until every conflict has been resolved.
Resolving collisions
When an incoming item collides with one you already have, you resolve it — per item, or all at once:
| Option | What happens |
|---|---|
| Keep mine (default) | Your copy wins. Nothing on disk changes. |
| Take theirs | The archive's copy replaces yours — the one destructive option here. eXLib writes a full backup of what it's about to overwrite before it does. |
| Keep both | The archive's copy is added alongside yours, disambiguated so the two don't collide. |
Answer them one at a time, or set them all at once from the row above the list. The dialog keeps a running tally of what it will do — how many items it will write, how many it will leave alone — and if you've chosen Take theirs anywhere, it says how many items on disk will be replaced and that a full backup is written first.
Import never removes anything. Every collision is yours to answer, with the non-destructive option preselected.
"Keep mine" is preselected for a reason — it's the choice that changes nothing on disk. If you're not sure what an incoming item will overwrite, that's the safe default to leave in place while you look.