A number of people have contacted me about how to move their Typepad blogs over to Wordpress. Typepad doesn’t make it easy. But at least you can Export a Typepad blog to your computer desktop as a .txt file.
Then, Wordpress – the friendliest blog platform – makes it easy for you to import. First, though, it’s best to FTP (upload) your Typepad .txt file to the wp-content folder of Wordpress.
Next, sign-in to Wordpress, click Tools in the left sidebar and Import. Select Movable Type/Typepad. Choose the second option for importing – “Or use mt-export.txt in your /wp-content/directory.” Click Import, and give Wordpress a few moments to do its magic, and import and convert the data.
I recently imported a huge Typepad blog with about 950 posts, pictures and comments using this process, and everything worked perfectly. Then, enjoy Wordpress!
Hi there. I'm Michael Pollock, and I train coaches, consultants and other solo-professionals on how to use the web to impact more people, earn more money and live a bigger life ... 
Thanks for this ‘takes the fear out of it’ post. I’ll use it on my Tone Hall blog when my term with TypePad is up. Wordpress is incredibly simple and intuitive!
Marsha,
Terrific. So happy it was helpful. TypePad, I have found, is not always a friendly environment.
David
[...] See the rest here: Import and Convert Typepad to Wordpress [...]
Thanks for the ‘how to’… I couldn’t find where the import link was until I read your instructions.
The only other changes I had to make were to the permalink (so it was similar to typepad) and converting the url for the older posts (May 2008 and earlier) to the same 15 character .html url that typepad used.
Out of interest, are the photos still hosted on Typepad? Or did you transfer them to your new Wordpress installation?
How do you convert posts onto the site once you’ve imported them? I’ve successfully imported the file to wp-content but I can’t tell what to do next.
David,
You do not import into the WP-Content folder. Open your Wordpress blog, click Manage, Import. Select the type of blog files you wish to import, and click Import. Just follow the directions.
David
How does this work on a mac with firefox? I cannot move my typepad posts.
Shouldn’t have anything to do with a Mac or Firefox. You will need to export or archive your Typepad site. Typepad provides instructions in their Help section. Save to your computer and then upload into Wordpress. I must say that Typepad is among the more challenging of any blog format to export. Good luck.
Are images still stored on the typepad server? Is there any way to transfer to your own server? Thanks!
Yes but if you follow Typepad’s instructions to export/backup a Typepad blog, you will get the images together with posts. I must say that I have never had great luck with Typepad because exporting is hit or miss. Good luck.
When I follow Typepad’s instructions to export all I get is a 23K file – which is basically code for a web page which when loaded as .html looks just like the Typepad export page – except it says “Typepad is exporting your blog”.
This doesn’t seem to make sense to me – I’ve tried it on PC, Mac, Firefox, IE – and I always get the same thing.
You say Typepad’s exporting is hit or miss – this seems like a total miss – is this me or typepad?