Recent changes to the Free Plan limit former Team members’ access to Collections in Shared Workspaces. A Team admin can still share them by connecting a Workspace to a git repo or providing exported files. You can also copy these Collections into an accessible Workspace programmatically using the Postman API.
The Postman API can read and create Collections within a specified Workspace in your account, allowing you to duplicate them directly instead of exporting and importing manually.
In this post, I’ll share a few methods to achieve this, but the flow remains generally the same:
- Retrieve the full collection JSON using the
GET /collections/{{source_collection_id}}endpoint - Send that payload back to the API to create a new collection using the
POST /collections?workspace={{target_workspace_id}} - Specify your workspace as the destination.
The result is an identical copy of the collection inside a workspace you own.
For all methods, you need your Postman API Key to authenticate your requests to the Postman API.
To get your Postman API Key, go to https://go.postman.co/settings/me/api-keys. Click the Generate API Key button at the top right, name your key, and copy the value for later use.
Get The Element Ids
To find the ID of any Postman element, including the CollectionID, open the element in a tab and go to the info section in the right sidebar.
To find the WorkspaceID, hover over the Workspace Name in the top left. A popout will appear showing Workspace metadata, including the WorkspaceID.
Copy The Collection JSON And Import
You can use cURL and the Import feature together to get the Collection JSON from the Postman API and copy it to the clipboard with one command. Then, paste it into the Import input field to generate the Collection in your Workspace.
curl --location "https://api.getpostman.com/collections/{{collectionId}}" --header "X-Api-Key: PMAK-XXX" | pbcopy
This uses pbcopy for MacOS, but you can replace it with clip or xclip for Windows or Linux.
Run This from The Terminal
If you prefer automating this locally, you can use a small script that performs the same task.
Create a new .sh file on your local system. Add your Postman API Key to the API_KEY variable in the script. Then, open the Postman Terminal and run the command with the CollectionID and WorkspaceID as arguments.
./copy_collection.sh <collection_id> <workspace_id>
These methods copy only one Workspace at a time, but the Postman API offers routes you can use in a script to loop through all Collections in a workspace and place them elsewhere.
If you need to copy the Environments from a Shared Workspace to a Personal Workspace, use this script:
The only caveat with environments or all variables is that if the values aren’t in the Shared Values column, they won’t be fully copied. The new Environment will only show the variable name.