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How to Migrate Conversations from Claude to Elvean

Claude’s data export gives you a conversations.json file with your full chat history. Elvean can read that export and bring every conversation into the app — messages, titles, and timestamps preserved.

Step 1: Export Your Claude Data

  1. Go to claude.ai and sign in.
  2. Click your profile picture (bottom-left) → Settings.
  3. Select Account from the sidebar.
  4. Under Data & Privacy, find Export Data and click it.
  5. Follow the prompts to confirm your export request.

Anthropic will email you a download link — this usually arrives within a few minutes to a few hours. The email comes from Anthropic with the subject line about your data export being ready.

Step 2: Download and Unzip

  1. Click the download link in the email.
  2. You’ll get a .zip file.
  3. Unzip it — double-click on macOS, or right-click → Open With → Archive Utility.

The unzipped folder contains conversations.json — this is your entire Claude chat history as a single file. The folder may also include other files like uploaded attachments.

Step 3: Import into Elvean

  1. Open Elvean.

  2. Go to Settings (⌘,) → Data.

  3. Click Import from Claude.

  4. In the file picker, select the unzipped folder containing conversations.json. If the file is at the top level of the folder you selected, Elvean finds it automatically. If it’s nested one level deep (common with Claude exports), Elvean searches inside and finds it.

  5. Click Import.

Elvean will show a confirmation dialog with how many conversations and messages it found. Click Import to proceed.

What Gets Imported

  • Every conversation with at least one message (empty conversations are skipped).
  • Message content from both you and Claude.
  • Conversation titles and timestamps.
  • The active (most recent) branch of each conversation — if you edited or regenerated a response, only the latest version of the thread is imported.
  • Conversations that already exist in Elvean are imported as new (duplicates are not merged).

What Doesn’t Get Imported

  • Image attachments and file uploads (Claude’s export includes references to files but not always the files themselves).
  • Custom Projects or custom instructions (import these as Elvean Project Instructions manually).
  • Claude-specific artifacts (standalone rendered documents) — the underlying text is imported but rendered as plain chat messages.
  • Deleted or archived conversations (only active conversations are in the export).

Tips

  • Large exports: If you have hundreds of conversations, the import may take a minute or two. Elvean processes everything locally — nothing is sent to any server.
  • Branched conversations: Claude lets you edit or regenerate any message, which creates branches. Elvean imports the most recent branch — the version you’d see when opening the conversation in Claude.ai.
  • Organize after import: Imported conversations land in a flat list. Use Elvean’s Projects and Favorites features to organize them afterward.