Importing Microsoft Whiteboard boards

Microsoft is retiring Whiteboard for personal accounts: boards became read-only in September 2026 and are deleted on 16 October 2026. Import from Microsoft Whiteboard brings your boards across, each as its own document holding one whiteboard tab you can keep drawing on: every pen stroke stays a stroke, with its pressure and colour, and sticky notes, text, shapes, lines and images come with it.

What you need

The import reads a board export: a folder per board holding the board's edit history, the way the Whiteboard web app syncs it. A board folder contains:

• manifest.json, metadata.json, session.json and changes.json
• an objects folder with the board's images

Other files beside them (such as a screenshot) are ignored. You can import one board folder, a folder holding many board folders, or a .zip of either.

Importing

On the Explorer page, next to Help and New document at the top right, Import from shows a button for each tool you can import from. (Excalidraw files have their own button: see Excalidraw files as new documents.) Press the Microsoft Whiteboard button (hover it to see its name). From inside a folder, the new documents go into that folder. Then choose a folder or a .zip, or drop one onto the panel. A single board imports straight away. When there are several, the panel lists them, newest first, each under the name its document will get, with the date it was last edited and how many items it holds. Every board starts ticked; untick the ones you don't want and press Import.

Each board becomes its own document, named after the board and dated as the board: it shows when the board was made and last edited, so your library keeps its history. A board that never had a title is named after the day it was made, such as "Whiteboard, 14 Aug 2020". When the import finishes, it lists the new documents so you can open them, and the Explorer shows them straight away. Nothing in your other documents changes.

How boards come across

• Pen strokes become marker strokes with their pressure, so thick and thin stay as you drew them.
• Colours follow your board: black ink on a light board, and white ink on a dark board, become your whiteboard's own ink, so they read on either background. Other colours keep their hue.
• Highlighter strokes stay highlighter strokes, and arrowheads drawn on pen strokes come with them.
• Sticky notes, text and shapes keep their position, size and text.
• Images are saved to your image gallery like any imported image.
• The board's background (plain, dots or grid, light or dark) carries over.

A few things change on the way, and the import says how many of each:

• Rainbow ink is drawn in pink, and galaxy ink in violet.
• Tables become rectangles, with the ink inside them kept.
• Strokes drawn in the board's own colour, which you could never see on the board, are left out.