Importing Your Old Vault

How to bring an existing Obsidian vault into the Celestial Vault. Recursive copy of markdown, images, and templates.

If you've been using Obsidian and have notes you'd like to bring into the Celestial Vault, the import button does most of the work for you.

What Gets Imported

When you run the importer, Celestial recursively copies the following from your old vault into your new Celestial Vault:

All .md files (your notes)
All embedded images (.png, .jpg, .gif, etc., wherever they live)
The contents of the old vault's Templates/ folder (so your custom templates come along)

Everything lands inside /old vault/<name>/ at the root of your Celestial Vault. The original is untouched — this is a copy, not a move.

What Doesn't Get Imported

For safety and cleanliness, the importer does not copy:

The .obsidian/ folder (plugin configurations, themes, snippets — these would conflict with Celestial's own setup)
.git/, .DS_Store, and other system / version-control files
Hidden folders starting with .
Database files from plugins (e.g., data.json files)

This is intentional. Your old plugin settings stay in your old vault. Celestial uses its own.

How To Run The Import

Option 1 — During Welcome

The welcome flow includes an Import step. Click it. An OS folder picker opens. Select the root of your old vault. Confirm.

Option 2 — From Settings (Anytime Later)

You can import after welcome too:

Open Settings → Celestial Vault
Scroll to the Migration section
Click Import an existing vault
Select the root folder of your old vault
Wait for the copy to finish

The importer prints progress as it goes. For a small vault (a few hundred notes), it takes a few seconds. For a large vault with lots of images, it can take a minute or two.

Where Your Imported Notes End Up

Celestial Vault/
├── 01 Daily/        ← Celestial's daily notes
├── 03 Monthly/
├── 04 Quarterly/    (Dreamlines)
├── 05 Yearly/
├── ... etc
└── old vault/
    └── My Old Vault/    ← your imported notes live here
        ├── Some note.md
        ├── Another note.md
        ├── Templates/
        └── ... etc

The folder name My Old Vault/ matches whatever your old vault's folder name was on disk.

Adapting Imported Notes To The Celestial Style

Your imported notes won't automatically use the Celestial categorical system. They keep their original frontmatter, tags, folder positions — exactly as they were.

If you want to gradually migrate them to Celestial's self-organizing approach, you have a few options:

This is fine. The notes still work. They show up in search. They show up in the graph. They just don't auto-aggregate into Celestial's database views (because they don't have categories: frontmatter).

2. Move important ones to the root and add categories.

When you find an old note you reference often, move it from /old vault/.../ to the root, open its properties, and add a categories: list with relevant wikilinks. It now joins the Celestial flow.

3. Selectively bulk-update with a tags-to-categories migration.

If your old vault used tags for organization, you can convert them to wikilink categories. Obsidian's built-in find and replace (Cmd + Shift + F on Mac, Ctrl + Shift + F on Windows) handles this well. Find #tag-name → replace with *Tag Name* and add a categories: line at the top.

Don't bulk-update everything.

The temptation is to spend a Saturday "porting" your old vault. Resist. Most of those notes you won't open again. Instead, port a note only when you actually need it — that way you only pay the migration cost on notes you'd actually use.

Deleting `/old vault/` Once You're Done

Once you've ported (or decided not to port) your imported notes, the /old vault/ folder is just dead weight in your file explorer. Three options:

1. Delete it.

Right-click → Delete. Gone. (Make sure your original vault is still on disk somewhere else if you want to keep it as backup.)

2. Hide it from the file explorer.

Add old vault to Settings → Files & Links → Excluded files. The folder still exists on disk but won't show in Obsidian.

3. Keep it as a fossil layer.

Leave it. Notes inside still work, still appear in search, still show in the graph. The folder name "old vault" makes its purpose obvious to future-you.

Common Issues

"The importer says my old vault doesn't exist."

Make sure you pointed the picker at the root of the old vault — the folder that contains the .obsidian/ subfolder. Not a subfolder inside the old vault.

"Some images are missing after import."

The importer copies images by walking the old vault's folder tree. If you had images in unusual locations (e.g., a relative path outside the vault folder, or symlinked from elsewhere), they wouldn't be picked up. Look at any broken-image embed in the imported notes — the path will tell you where the original was.

"My templates are imported but Templater can't find them."

Open Settings → Templater and update the Template folder location to point at old vault/<name>/Templates/ (or wherever your imported templates landed). Or copy the templates into Celestial's main Templates/ folder.

Up Next

The Self-Organizing Vault — the philosophy you'll want to read before porting
Wikilink Categories — how to add categories to imported notes
The Empty-Tab Atmosphere — what awaits you after onboarding