Manage and organize Postman Collections

You can save, organize, and find all of your API requests in Postman Collections. Use folders to group requests by type or use case, and reorder requests to replicate workflows. If you don't want to keep a change, you can revert your collection to an earlier state.

Collection basics

To view all collections in the current workspace, click Collections in the sidebar. From here you can take the following actions:

• Click a collection to open its overview in the workbench.
• Click the arrow next to a collection to expand its contents.
• Hover over a collection and click Favorite to move that collection to the top of the list.
• Use the search box in the sidebar to filter collections and their contents.
• Reorder the requests, folders, and examples inside a collection by dragging and dropping them.

Add folders to a collection

You can use folders to organize the requests and examples in a collection. You can also add subfolders to create more levels of nesting.

1. Click View more actions next to the collection, then click Add folder.

   To add a subfolder, click View more actions next to a folder, then click Add folder.

2. Add items to the folder or subfolder by dragging and dropping them.

Delete a collection

Delete an HTTP or multi-protocol collection if you no longer need it. You can delete collections where you have Editor permissions.

To delete an HTTP collection, do the following:

1. Click View more actions next to a collection, then click Delete.

   You can also click the collection and then press Delete on your keyboard.

2. Review the collection in the delete dialog. You can take the following actions before you delete:

   • Click forks to view details about the collection's forks and the users who have created them.
   • Click monitors to view the monitors created from the collection.
   • Click mock servers to view the mock servers associated with the collection.
   • If the collection is larger than 30 MB, you can click Export to back up the collection before deleting it. You can't restore a deleted collection if it's larger than 30 MB.

   If a collection is larger than 30 MB, you can split the collection's contents into multiple smaller collections before deleting it. This gives you the option to restore the collections later.

3. Click Delete

4. If the collection has requests, enter "delete" then click Delete Collection.

To delete a multi-protocol collection, do the following:

1. Click View more actions next to a collection, then click Delete.

   You can also click the collection and then press Delete on your keyboard.

2. Click Delete

View a deleted collection

You can view HTTP collections that you and other team members deleted. Deleted collections are retained for a limited period of time depending on your Postman plan.

To view collections you and your team members deleted, click Trash in the Postman footer.

You can view collections that you and other team members deleted, including collections from workspaces you deleted. For each collection, you can view the collection's name, workspace it was deleted from, user who deleted it, and the date it was deleted. You can also view the date the collection will be permanently deleted. Take the following actions to search for and filter your team's deleted collections:

• Click the Search collections box and search for a collection by name.
• Click the Workspaces dropdown list, then select the workspace a collection was deleted from.
• Click the Deleted by dropdown list, then select a user who deleted the collection.
• Click a collection to view more information, such as the number of times it was forked.

If a collection you expected to be in the trash isn't there, it may have been moved to another workspace rather than deleted. Learn more about moving elements.

Use the changelog

To review the changelog for a collection in Postman, open the collection and click Changelog.

The changelog provides a chronological list of the collection's activities. You can view the time and date at which changes occurred, the users who made changes, and the affected parts of the collection.

Postman groups changes made within several minutes of each other into sessions for readability. You can select a session in the changelog to review its changes.

Click View diff to view the collection's diff. If a diff is too large to view in the changelog, you can hover over the diff and click View more to open it in a new tab.

Hide diffs in the changelog

If you have an Editor role for a collection, you can hide specific actions in its changelog. When you hide a changelog entry's diff, users who don't have Editor permissions on the collection can't view that diff in the changelog. This enables you to protect sensitive data in a public collection.

Click View more actions for the changelog entry, then click Hide diff for this change.

To restore the visibility of a diff, click View more actions for the changelog entry, then click Show diff to all users. Once you restore the visibility of a diff, all users can view it in the changelog.

Recover or permanently delete a collection

You can recover and permanently delete HTTP collections you and other team members deleted where you had Admin or Editor permissions. The actions you can take on the deleted collection depend on the roles you were assigned when the collection was deleted. Deleted collections are retained for a limited period of time depending on your Postman plan.

You can also recover and permanently delete collections that were in workspaces you deleted. If a team member deletes a workspace, you won't be able to view or take any actions on the deleted collections, even if you had Admin or Editor permissions.

Users on paid plans regularly receive emails that notify you when collections will permanently delete from your team. Once a collection is permanently deleted, it can't be recovered. The email will include collections you created or deleted.

You can't recover deleted collections that are larger than 30 MB.

To recover a deleted collection, do the following:

1. Click Trash in the Postman footer.

2. Hover over a collection and click Restore.

   You can also click the collection, and then select Restore.

3. Choose the workspace where you'd like to restore the collection.

4. Click Restore Collection.

To permanently delete a collection, do the following:

1. Click Trash in the Postman footer.

2. Hover over a collection, and click Delete permanently.

   You can also click the collection, and then select Delete.

3. Click Delete.

Revert collection changes

Postman retains a changelog of the changes made to a collection. If needed, you can revert the collection to an earlier state.

1. Click Changelog in the right sidebar.

2. Click a session to expand it.

3. Click View more actions next to a change and click Restore to this change.

   The collection is reverted to the state it was in after the selected change.

If you'd like to restore a deleted collection, see Recover or permanently delete a collection.