Backing Up Flows: A Backup Strategy Using Solution Export in Power Automate

A flow that has grown over months, uses several connections, and runs in production across multiple departments is quickly lost if an environment is deleted, a license status changes, or a flow is accidentally overwritten. Power Automate doesn't offer a classic "Save" button the way you'd expect from traditional backup software. Instead, every reliable backup relies on the same mechanism used to move flows between environments: exporting a solution.

This article uses the official Microsoft documentation to show how to export flows via solutions, what difference managed and unmanaged solutions make, and how to build a repeatable backup routine from this. That way you stay in control of whether your automations can actually be restored in an emergency, instead of finding out only after data loss. As of: July 2026.

Why Power Automate has no built-in backup

In everyday use, a single flow can be created, edited, and run without any export routine at all, without you ever having to deal with a solution. That's exactly what becomes a problem in an emergency: without a solution, a flow exists only as a single object in one environment, with no versioned copy anywhere else. According to the Microsoft documentation on exporting solutions, this is exactly why an unmanaged solution should be created: "so that you can create a backup copy in case something happens." A backup is therefore not an automatic background process, but a deliberate export step that you trigger yourself, or automate, on a regular basis.

Solutions as the foundation of any backup strategy

Before a backup can work, the flow has to be part of a solution in the first place. The documentation on solution concepts distinguishes two types:

• Unmanaged solutions are the development state. They can be edited freely and exported either as unmanaged or as managed. This unmanaged version is considered the actual source of your Power Platform resources and should be checked into a version control system.
• Managed solutions are finished build artifacts that get imported into test or production environments. They can no longer be edited directly and, crucially for a backup strategy, they can't be exported either.

For a working backup this means: the flow must live in an unmanaged solution, because that's the only place you can trigger an export from at all. If a flow is currently only part of the default solution, it first needs to be added to its own, named solution before a meaningful export is possible.

Step by step: exporting a solution

The guide on exporting a solution describes the process directly in Power Automate:

• Sign in to Power Automate and select Solutions in the left-hand navigation.
• Select the unmanaged solution that contains the flow, and click Export.
• In the Before you export section, you should enable Publish all customizations, because exporting an unmanaged solution only takes published components with it. Optionally, you can also run the solution checker against performance and stability issues.
• Assign a version number and choose Export as as either Managed or Unmanaged. For a pure backup copy, the unmanaged export is the right choice, since it stays editable afterward.
• After the export, a ZIP file is available for download. Inside it, the flows are stored in the Workflows folder, each as its own JSON file. Since February 2022, this format is output multi-line, specifically so it can be tracked cleanly in a version control system like Git.

One note from the same guide is worth keeping in mind before every export: environment variable values should be removed before exporting, so that no environment-specific values, such as test-server URLs, accidentally end up in the backup and reappear when restoring into the wrong environment.

Backing up individual flows without a solution

Not every flow is already part of a solution. For this case, the documentation on exporting and importing non-solution flows describes a second way: the classic package export as a ZIP file via My flows and the menu item Export > Package (.zip). Important for practice:

• Only the owner or co-owner of a flow can export it this way.
• Importing into another environment requires the Environment Maker role there.
• Flow packages can't be mixed with Dataverse solution packages; the two formats are incompatible.

Microsoft explicitly points out, in the same place, that for genuine Application Lifecycle Management, Dataverse and solutions are the recommended path, meaning package export remains more of a stopgap for individual flows that can't be part of a solution. For a resilient backup strategy across multiple flows, there's no way around solutions.

Restoring: importing a solution

A backup is only as good as its restorability. The documentation on importing a solution notes a few details on this that matter in an emergency:

• A solution can't be imported into an environment where the same solution already exists. To test a restore, you therefore need a separate environment.
• After the import, all included components, i.e. flows, connection references, and apps, belong to the user who performed the import.
• If the flows were switched on at export time and all connection references get valid connections during import, they're automatically switched back on. If a flow already exists in the target system, its current on/off state remains unchanged instead.
• During the import, all flows in the solution are briefly disabled and then re-enabled. Anyone wanting to minimize this effect in production environments is better off, according to the documentation, working with several smaller solutions instead of a single large one.

A backup routine that holds up in everyday use

From these individual pieces of documentation, a practical routine can be derived:

• Group related flows into clearly named, unmanaged solutions instead of leaving everything in the default solution.
• Export these solutions regularly, not just before major changes, and store the ZIP files, versioned, in a repository.
• Remove environment variable values before exporting, and instead document which values need to be set per target environment.
• Keep solutions relatively small and cut along thematic lines, so a restore doesn't unnecessarily disable a lot of unrelated flows at once.
• Test the restore at least once in a separate environment before relying on it in an emergency.

For many SMEs, this last point is exactly the biggest gap: some ZIP file exists, but no one has ever checked whether the import actually works. At NordFlux, we build this backup and export routine directly into our Power Automate consulting, including version control and a documented restore test, so that losing a flow stops being an emergency and becomes a matter of a few minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Is it enough to manually duplicate flows instead of exporting a solution?

No, a duplicated flow object stays tied to the same environment and isn't an external backup copy. Only exporting a solution creates a ZIP file outside the environment that can be versioned, archived, and imported into another environment.

Can I export a managed solution as a backup?

No. According to the documentation, managed solutions fundamentally cannot be exported. For backups, you always need the underlying unmanaged solution from which the managed version was originally created.

What happens to connections when I import a solution into a new environment?

Connection references are imported along with everything else, but the actual connections need to either be newly created in the target system or shared with the importing user. Without a valid connection, an imported flow remains visible but can't be activated automatically.

How often should I back up flows via solutions?

The documentation doesn't specify a fixed frequency, but explicitly recommends regular, repeated exports. In practice, a rhythm oriented around how often changes happen has proven effective: after every substantive change to a flow, plus an additional fixed interval, such as weekly, as a safety net.

Do I need a separate solution for every flow?

No, that would be needlessly granular. It makes more sense to bundle flows that belong together thematically or procedurally into a shared solution. The only important thing is not to let a solution grow so large that a single restore operation briefly disables all of the organization's flows at once.