Protected Items

Concept

The protection system prevents important items from being accidentally overwritten.

Protecting Items

1. Open the Project Explorer from the TIA Portal icon in the Activity Bar
2. Navigate to the desired item — a block, folder, tag table, or data type
3. Click the lock in the Protection column of the item's row (between the Export and Vault columns)

The Protection column shows an empty box while an item is unmarked, an red lock once it is marked, and a dimmed red lock when only part of a folder's contents is marked. Clicking the lock (or pressing Enter/Space while it has keyboard focus) toggles the mark — the click never opens the block and never expands or collapses the folder. Marking a folder marks everything inside it.

A count badge at the right of the view title bar counts every marked item — folders, tag tables, and data types as well as blocks — and its tooltip reads "Protected: N items selected"; clicking the ✕ next to it clears the whole selection at once.

Note: The protection mark is Studio's own protect-from-import/export selection — it does not change know-how protection on the PLC.

Know-how-protected blocks carry an orange KHP badge in the Project Explorer.

Marked items are:

• Skipped by every import: they are neither deleted nor overwritten
• Excluded from export (when "Export Protected Files" is unchecked in Import/Export Settings)

Tip: Even when protected items are excluded from export, folder structure is always preserved.

Code and Attribute Updates for Protected OBs

Organization blocks (OBs) often keep stable code while their timing settings still need adjusting. When an OB is selected for protection — or is already know-how protected — two small toggle buttons appear next to its protection lock:

• C — allow code updates: during import, the OB's program code is still updated even though the block is protected.
• A — allow attribute updates: during import, the OB's attributes (such as cycle time and phase offset) are updated while the rest of the block stays untouched.

A bright button means the toggle is on; a dimmed button means it is off. Both toggles are saved as part of a profile, so a saved profile restores them together with the protection selection.

The Mark During an Import

Every way something reaches your project leaves marked items untouched:

• Import Selected and Import All in the Import / Export view
• A drag from the export folder or from the file explorer onto the Project Explorer
• Import Files… and Import All… in the context menu of a block or folder
• Import Selected, Copy Selected and saving in the Compare Editor
• Saving a block in the block editor, an edit in its interface table, or a tag table in the tag table editor
• Imports made by the AI assistant
• The test blocks a test suite generates
• Deploying and importing from Forge

Each of them leaves the item as it is and tells you so afterwards.

After the import the message says how many protected items were left unchanged, for example "Imported 12/15 files into PLC_1. 3 protected items were not overwritten." Show Details lists each of them. If you only picked protected items, Studio reports that nothing was imported.

A marked organization block with A on still gets its attributes, a marked organization block with C on still gets its code; everything else about it stays as it is.

When you pick files through Import Files… or drop them from the file explorer, only the mark on the item itself counts; a mark on a folder has no effect there.

A marked folder also covers an item that joins it later: when the folder's mark comes back, for example after a reload or after you apply a profile, everything now inside that folder carries the mark with it, so an item added after you saved the marks is protected as well, and the tree shows it that way.

Your marks stay set when the Project Explorer reloads the same project, for example after an import. When an import goes into a project the Project Explorer is not showing, the marks of that project's last applied profile are used, and if none has been applied yet, those of its first profile.

If the marks of the target cannot be read, nothing is imported: a message names the reason and the project is left unchanged.

What Import All Keeps in Addition

Import All replaces the complete PLC content, and beyond your marks it keeps on its own:

• every block that is know-how-protected on the PLC, marked or not
• the organization blocks of the safety program

When an organization block sits inside a marked folder, Import All leaves its file out entirely, its attributes included. Through Import Selected the same block with A on still gets its attributes.

Fail-Safe Items and the Safety Login

TIA Portal only changes blocks and data types of the safety program while you are logged in to the safety program. Log in inside TIA Portal, or click Safety Login in the title bar of the Project Explorer.

Without the login these items stay unchanged and a warning says how many of them were not imported. The Safety Login button in that warning takes you straight to the login for the PLC concerned. Log in and import them again.

Applying Actual Know-How Protection

Marking an item with the red lock is only a selection — it does not yet change anything on the PLC. The Set Protection / Clear Protection entries in the Protection submenu only adjust this red-lock selection.

To actually know-how-protect blocks on the PLC, use the Password Vault instead: unlock the vault, assign stored passwords to the blocks (via the Vault column or Assign Stored Vault Password in the Vault submenu), then right-click the block or folder and choose Bulk Protect (or Bulk Unprotect to remove it) from the Vault submenu. These commands only appear while the vault is unlocked and operate on the blocks selected via the Vault checkbox. To unprotect one block only, right-click it and choose Unprotect with Stored Password.

Profiles

A Profiles bar above the project tree saves your complete protection selection — folders, tag tables, and data types included — together with all import/export settings and the export folder as a named, per-project profile:

Profiles: [ Profile Name ▼ ]  ▶  [ Add profile ]  💾  🗑  ↻  📁

Save a profile:

1. Configure your protection selection
2. Type a name in the Add profile box
3. Click 💾 (Save)

Apply a profile:

1. Select a saved profile in the dropdown
2. Click ▶ (Apply)

A profile covers every option of the Import/Export settings, including the two for data types, Prefer .udt over .xml and Data Types as .udt Source, so applying it puts them back the way you had them.

Applying a profile restores the selection only — it does not protect the blocks itself (use Bulk Protect in the Vault submenu for that). Profiles are stored per project; opening a project re-applies the profile you last used.