Copy sessions from another event

Running a recurring conference, or building this year’s program from last year’s? Copy from another event brings sessions or abstracts from any other event in your organization into the one you’re working in — including titles, descriptions, durations, settings, custom field values, and (optionally) speakers — without recreating anything by hand.

Copies are brand-new records in your current event. The source event is never modified.

Note

You need to be on the event team of both events, and you need permission to create sessions in the destination event. Events from other organizations never appear.

Start a copy

1. In the destination event, go to the Sessions module (or Abstracts, if you’re copying abstracts) and open the submissions directory.

2. Open the options menu (⋯) at the top right and choose Copy from another event….

3. Pick the source event. The list shows every event in your organization you have access to, with a count of how many sessions or abstracts it has available to copy. The event name stays visible at the top of every later step, so you always know where you’re copying from.

Choose what to copy

Search and page through the source event’s sessions, then tick the ones you want. Select all matching grabs everything that matches your current search in one click — there’s no limit on how many you can copy; large selections are processed in batches of 50 with a progress bar.

Only published sessions can be copied. Drafts and sessions that were merged into another session don’t appear.

Map tracks, fields, and other event settings

Sessions reference things that belong to their event — tracks, session types/formats, levels, languages, rooms, custom statuses, tags, and event-level custom fields. Since those don’t automatically exist in your destination event, the wizard lists every one your selected sessions actually use and asks what to do with each:

• Pick an existing value — when your destination event already has an equivalent (for example, both events have a “Clinical” track). Anything with the same name is matched and pre-selected for you automatically.
• Create “(name)” in this event — clones the value from the source event into the destination, so the copied sessions keep it.
• Don’t set on copies (or Don’t copy this field’s values for custom fields) — the copied sessions simply won’t have that value. Skipping never creates broken references; the field or setting is left empty.

For custom fields, only fields of the same type can be mapped to each other (a text field can’t feed a dropdown).

Two toggles on this step control the rest:

• Copy participants — off by default. Turn it on to bring each session’s speakers, moderators, and chairpersons along. Contacts are shared across your organization, so no duplicate contacts are created — but copying a participant does add them to this event, so they appear in your Contacts and on the session’s Participants tab.
• Reset status to Pending — on by default, so copied sessions re-enter your review flow. Turn it off to keep each session’s status from the source event.

Review and confirm

The final step summarizes exactly what will happen: how many sessions and abstracts will be copied, what will be created in your event, what will be skipped, and your participant and status choices. Nothing is copied until you confirm here — you can go back and adjust any step first.

If some sessions carry more values in a field than your event allows — for example five Tags where this event allows three — the Review step warns you before you copy, with the count and the titles affected. Those sessions will not be copied. Mapping some of those values to Don’t set on copies on the mapping step can bring a session under the limit; the warning counts the source event’s values, so a listed session may still copy once you have trimmed its mapping.

After the copy finishes, the confirmation shows how many sessions were copied and lists any that were not, each with its title and the reason. The destination directory refreshes with the new sessions.

A session that already has a copy in this event is not copied again: it is listed with Already copied into this event, and its existing copy is used as the parent for any of its subsessions in the same run. Running the same copy twice, or retrying after an interruption, never creates duplicates. To copy a session again, delete its existing copy first.

See where a session came from

Every copy remembers its origin, in both directions:

• On a copied session, the Connections tab shows a Copied from another event banner linking back to the original.
• On the original session, the same tab lists Copies in other events with links to each copy.
• Both sessions’ Activity feeds record the copy, who ran it, and when.

If the original session is later deleted, the copy keeps working — the banner simply notes the source is no longer available.

Tip

Copying sessions moves your program content between events. To copy an entire event — forms, emails, team, settings and all — use Clone an event instead. To copy just custom fields, see Copy fields from another event.

Frequently asked questions

Can I move sessions to another event instead of copying them?

Copy them, then take them out of the source event. There is no move action: copying always leaves the original untouched. Once the copies are in the destination, set the originals to Declined or delete them. The copies keep working either way — deleting an original only changes the Copied from another event banner to say the source is no longer available.

Can I send sessions to a platform that isn't in the integrations list?

Yes, through the Sessionboard API. A developer on your side, or the platform’s, can read sessions, speakers and schedules with an API token. See the integrations overview for the platforms that connect without code.