# Restore a backup

To restore a backup, you can use the [Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/storage/storage-explorer). This provides a nice UI to interface with the storage account and lets you import data from a CSV backup file into the target table, or into another table.

Using the Azure Storage Explorer, connect to your Azure subscription and locate the storage account containing your backups.

<figure><img src="/files/1J1LltnnnfQMqXhaE4CT" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Within the **tablebackups** blob container, open the folder with your table name and identify which backup file you want to restore from.

<figure><img src="/files/7njl8kLvxaaBeq6KBoNK" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Select the file and click **Download** in the menu to save the file locally.

<figure><img src="/files/rWqDkr4P1fIlXXJ5fvdu" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Open the storage table you want to restore to and click **Import** in the menu.

Select your locally-saved backup file to import it.

<figure><img src="/files/vZ1jUBN9686dVsL63x2e" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

Notice the option at the bottom: **Replace entity values in the table with imported data.** In my testing this option does not seem to have any effect as whether it is selected or not, any row being restored which matches the **PartitionKey** and **RowKey** of any entity in the table will be overwritten with the restored data.

In any case, any entities in the table in that are not present in the backup file will remain present in the table and any entities missing from the table will be restored from the imported data.

So if you want to do an authentic point-in-time restore, you may wish to first delete all the entities in the table before you restore, or simply restore to a new table, and change the name when you're happy that the restored data is good.


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