Export from Default Environment → Import to Your New Power Platform Environment

Before you begin

• Decide if your destination should use a managed solution (recommended for “prod”) or unmanaged (for dev).
• Ensure the destination environment has needed connections, connection references, and environment variables (or plan to re-create/map them during import).

Part A — Export from Default

1. Open Power Apps and switch to the Default environment.

   

2. Go to Solutions → select the solution that contains your app/flows.

   

   

3. Select Export solution → Next → choose Managed (production) or Unmanaged (development) → complete the wizard to download the .zip.
   If you don’t need to publish changes before migrating, you can ignore the Before you export warning.
   Export time can range from ~5–30 minutes depending on size.

   

   

   

   

Part B — Import into your new environment

1. Switch the environment (upper-right) to your new PAYG-linked environment.

   

2. Go to Solutions → Import → upload the exported .zip.
   Note: If the destination environment doesn’t have Dataverse yet, choose Create a database in the Solutions window first. Then return and use Import solution.

   

   

   

3. Use Browse to choose the file you downloaded earlier, then click Import. The import can take ~5–30 minutes depending on size.
4. Publish customizations (if you imported unmanaged) and validate the app/flows.

Tips

• Managed vs. unmanaged: For healthy ALM, use managed in higher environments; unmanaged is for dev.
• Source control/CI: Store solution files in Git and automate imports via pipelines (Azure DevOps/GitHub actions).

References

• Need to use Copilot Credits? Attach an Azure subscription for PAYG/Copilot Credits
• Don't have an Azure Subscription to attach to your environment? Request an Azure subscription