How to Migrate Custom Fields Data from ACF to Meta Box Plugin

If you are willing to change from ACF to Meta Box, how can you move all the custom fields data? Not only you but many others care about this matter. Therefore, recently Meta Box has released a new free extension called MB ACF Migration. This extension helps users migrate custom fields data from ACF to Meta Box with ONLY ONE CLICK. In this post, I will show you how to do that at the drop of a hat.

Table of Contents hide

1. Introduction of MB ACF Migration
2. Preparation
3. Move Data from ACF to Meta Box
4. Last Words

Well, if you are still confused about what ACF and Meta Box are different or which is better, you can read this comparison first.

Introduction of MB ACF Migration

MB ACF Migration is a free extension released by the Meta Box team. This plugin helps users easily migrate custom fields data from ACF to Meta Box. In the past, it took a lot of time to do it. But now, it’s so much easier with ONLY ONE CLICK thanks to MB ACF Migration.

With MB ACF Migration, you can easily migrate these types of data from ACF to Meta Box:

Field group’s settings with location rules
Data of most field types, including relationships, groups,
repeaters, flexible contents
Data of conditional logic
Data of option pages
Data of posts, terms, users

Preparation

Meta Box core plugin: the framework to deal with custom fields. You can download and install it from wordpress.org.
Meta Box Builder: A Meta Box premium extension that provides UI to create and manage custom fields on the backend.
MB ACF Migration: This extension is also available in the WordPress repo. Besides, if you use Meta Box AIO or Meta Box Core (in the premium bundle), go to Meta Box > Extension and you will see MB ACF Migration in the extension list. Just tick to enable it. You may need to update the latest version of Meta Box AIO to have this extension.

Activate MB ACF Migration in Meta Box AIO.

Besides these above plugins, remember to install all the needed Meta Box extensions that are corresponding to the features being migrated. For example, if you have fields in a group created by ACF, you have to enable Meta Box Group to migrate the group field data. Or in ACF, when you set a location to display a field group in taxonomy then you have to activate the MB Term Meta extension in Meta Box.

To know more about all the Meta Box extensions, please go to this Meta Box extension page.

Note that in the process of moving data, you have to enable all the plugins I mentioned above.

Move Data from ACF to Meta Box

I used ACF to create a group of fields as below. These fields are Text, Email, Gallery, and Repeater. In Repeater, there are sub-fields: Checkbox, Text, and Gallery.

Custom Fields created with ACF — Fields created with ACF

Sub-fields in a group field created with ACF — Sub-fields in a group field in ACF

Besides, I used conditional logic to display the Image field when users choose Project Type as Web Design. The field group that I created by ACF is displayed like this:

the field group created by ACF is displayed.

Similar to all the above features in ACF, I will use these extensions of Meta Box:

Meta box Group: to have Group field, corresponding to Group + Repeater in ACF
MB Conditional Logic: to have the conditional logic feature.

Use extensions of Meta Box: Meta Box Group & MB Conditional Logic.

I’d like to remind you a bit that to migrate custom fields data from ACF to Meta Box, you have to activate all the necessary plugins, even ACF as well.

After installing and activating MB ACF Migration, a new ACF Migration menu appears in the Meta Box menu. Go there and click Migrate. Then, wait about 1 minute for a message that notices the moving process has been completed.

Using MB ACF Migration to move custom fields data from ACF to Meta Box

Next, deactivate ACF and go to a post. Then, you can see that the fields are displayed exactly the same as when you use ACF. All the features like group and conditional logic also work well.

Fields are displayed exactly the same as when you use ACF after using MB ACF Migration

Here are the fields are shown in the field edit. All the information such as field group ID and ID of each field have remained:

Field group ID and ID of each field have remained after moving custom fields data from ACF to Meta box

Last Words

Just with one click, you can migrate custom fields data from ACF to Meta Box in an easy and fast way. However, ACF doesn’t have the feature to create custom post types and custom taxonomies so you need CPT UI plugin. Therefore, if you want to move data from CPT UI to Meta Box, you can do it the same way as I mentioned in the tutorial on migrating custom fields data from Pods to Meta Box. You just have to create custom post types and custom taxonomies by Meta Box with the same title and ID them as in CPT UI.

What do you think about this Meta Box feature? Let us know in the comment section!