Article

How to export Salesforce accounts, opportunities and cases

By TrustPast

Updated November 6, 2026

A company of 30 or more that runs on Salesforce has years of its selling and its service in one org. The accounts, every opportunity and the stages it passed, and every case the support team opened and closed. A buyer pays to license records like these to train AI models. You don’t export anything to apply. You count what you have, and an export comes later, if at all, after an agreement says what it covers. This guide settles what to count, who in the org can export, and what each of Salesforce’s export tools produces, in Salesforce’s own words.

Version note. Checked on 6 November 2026 against Salesforce Help’s pages on the data export service, report exports, field history, opportunities and cases, and against the Data Loader Guide, version 68.0, Winter ’27. Each is linked where it is used. Editions, menus and limits change. If a step here differs from Salesforce’s page, Salesforce’s page wins.

You don’t export to apply

micro1 is the buyer on this page. Two of the areas it lists read like a Salesforce org. Under Sales & CRM: “CRM data, sales processes, playbooks, customer lifecycle documentation, and revenue operations.” Under Customer support: “Support documentation, ticket workflows, QA processes, customer operations, and knowledge management.” Its eligibility answer names “CRM records” and “support tickets” beside SOPs and project histories.

micro1’s published steps start with the company, not with files. First “Discovery & pricing”, where “We identify licensable datasets across your business and tailor an offer based on the nature, scale, and value of your data.” Then “Contracting”. Then “Delivery & acceptance”, where “You securely transfer your data through our APIs or other approved methods.” Then “Payment”. Files move in the third step, after the contract.

What micro1 asks for first is a description, not a download. Its referral page says the company “sets up the company’s profile on the company portal” and “completes data manifest.” Its estimator asks three questions: “How many employees does your company have?”, “How many years of data do you have?”, with the note “Typically the number of years you’ve been in business”, and “Where is your company headquartered?”

micro1 publishes this, word for word: “Before any participation, together we confirm:”

“U.S. and allied buyers only”
“Data segregation”
“De-identified before sharing”
“Defined retention periods”

Then, at contracting: “We establish clear licensing terms, including a commitment not to resell or distribute your data until personal and identifying information has been anonymized.” micro1 publishes nothing more on how data is delivered. So this guide does not tell you to send a file anywhere. It shows what Salesforce’s exports produce, so the scope you agree to is one Salesforce can actually deliver.

Apply & License Your Data

What is wanted, and what is not

The names in Salesforce are not the point. Nor are the phone numbers, the email addresses or what each customer paid. micro1 says what it is after: “data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” It adds that “The most valuable datasets capture real operational expertise, decision-making processes, and repeatable workflows.”

In a Salesforce org, as we read it, that is two stories.

How a deal moved. Salesforce describes an opportunity as the record of a deal in progress: the calls logged, the notes from customer meetings, the tasks, the email, and the stage updated “to indicate where the deal is in the process.” Which stages a deal passed, how long it sat in each, and how the amount changed on the way is the work.
How a case was diagnosed and resolved. Salesforce defines a case as “a customer’s question, feedback, or issue,” and lists five steps a support team follows: “Identify”, “Record”, “Resolve”, “Communicate” and “Close”. The comments and the history in between show how the problem was worked out.

An account record with a company name and a phone number shows neither story. The stage history, the case history and the comments show both. That is why this guide goes counts first, then permissions, then the files.

The records are de-identified before use. micro1 says “Personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties.” It also says that “certain datasets may undergo synthetic rewrites that preserve workflow structure while reducing direct ties to original records.” The structure stays. The people in it don’t.

How much you have, and where to find it

The numbers that matter are people, years, accounts, opportunities and cases. Salesforce’s export pages do not describe one screen that shows all of these totals at once. So here is our own method, using what Salesforce already shows.

The years. Open the oldest opportunity and the oldest case still in the org. Their dates are where the record starts. Note whether a spreadsheet or another system came before Salesforce; those years may sit somewhere else.
The accounts. Note how many there are, and whether the org uses person accounts. Salesforce says business accounts “store information about companies” and person accounts “store information about individual people.” A person account is a customer’s name by design.
The opportunities. Note how many there are, and how many stages your sales process uses. A company that sells two kinds of work often runs two processes.
The cases. Note how many there are, and which channels they came in through. Salesforce lists Email-to-Case for emails, Web-to-Case for web forms, phone and messaging among them.
The history. Open a few opportunities and cases from different years and look at the history lists. A rough count of entries per record, times the number of records, is a fair first estimate. It is our own shortcut, not a Salesforce figure.
The people. How many staff work in Salesforce, and how many work at the company in all. micro1’s published line is “30+ full-time employees.”

That gives you six lines. They are what we would bring to the first call. micro1 says “There’s no fixed minimum number of files, documents, or terabytes,” and that “Companies with several years of records across multiple business systems are generally a stronger fit.” Salesforce is one system. Count the others too.

Who can export, and what the edition allows

Salesforce sets the gates in two places: the edition and the user’s permissions. There are three export tools, and each has its own rules.

The data export service. This is the backup of the whole org. Salesforce says: “Weekly export available in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions” and “Monthly export available in: All editions, except for Database.com.” The permission is called “Weekly Data Export”. Salesforce warns that users with it “can view all exported data and all custom objects and fields in the Export Service page,” and that it is “granted by default only to the System Administrator profile because it enables wide visibility.” Also, “Only active users can run export jobs.” (Salesforce on the data export)

Data Loader. This is a desktop application. Salesforce’s guide lists it as available in “Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.” To use it, a user needs “API Enabled” and the permission for the operation; to export records, “Read on the records.” Salesforce says “When exporting, Data Loader outputs CSV files.” (Data Loader Guide)

Report exports. A report can be exported to a spreadsheet in “Essentials, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions,” with the “Export Reports” permission. (Salesforce on report exports)

Our advice: give export rights to the owner and one admin, and write down who they are. The weekly export sees everything, so the fewer people hold it, the better.

The steps, in Salesforce’s words

These are Salesforce’s steps for the data export service, quoted or kept to Salesforce’s own labels. Run them after an agreement, not before. Each step links the page it comes from.

From Setup, enter Data Export in the Quick Find box, then select Data Export and Export Now or Schedule Export. Salesforce says Export Now “prepares your files for export immediately” and “is only available if enough time has passed since your last export.” (source)
Select the encoding for the export file. Salesforce’s page then explains how to open UTF-8, UTF-16 big endian and little endian files. (source)
Decide on attachments. The options are “Include images, documents, and attachments” and “Include Salesforce Files and Salesforce CRM Content document versions.” Salesforce notes that “Including special content in the export increases data export processing time.” Leave them off unless the scope names them. (source)
Choose whether to “Replace carriage returns with spaces.” Salesforce says this helps if the files will be imported or used in other integrations. (source)
If you schedule the export, set the frequency, the start and end dates, and the time of day. Salesforce says the frequency is “only available for orgs with monthly exports.” (source)
Under Exported Data, select the types of data to include. Salesforce recommends “Include all data” if you aren’t familiar with the terms. For a scoped export, as our own advice, tick only the objects the agreement names: accounts, opportunities and cases, for example, not everything. (source)
Click Start Export or Save. “Salesforce creates a zip archive of CSV files and emails the user who scheduled the export when it’s ready.” To download, follow the link in the email or click Data Export. (source)

Salesforce adds one practical note: “Exports complete as soon as possible, however we can’t guarantee the date and time of completion.” Heavy traffic can push a weekly export back by a week. It may also ask the user to pass a CAPTCHA before it exports.

When a narrower file is better

The data export service takes whole objects. Most scopes are narrower than that. Salesforce offers two tools that take less.

Data Loader. The guide’s export starts with “Click Export.” Its alternative, “Export All”, also exports “archived activity records and soft-deleted records.” The user logs in, chooses an object, such as Account, chooses a CSV file, then builds a query: “Choose the fields you want to export,” and “Optionally, select conditions to filter your dataset.” Salesforce warns that “If you do not select any conditions, all the data to which you have read access is returned.” The query language is SOQL, which Salesforce compares to the SELECT command in SQL. (Data Loader Guide)

That filter is the useful part. A scope can say “opportunities closed between these dates, these fields only,” and Data Loader can produce exactly that. It has limits. Salesforce says it “doesn’t support nested queries or querying child objects,” and gives a case query with an owner’s name as an example of a polymorphic query that fails. It “currently does not support exporting attachments.” Its large-file ceiling is high: “up to 150 million records when used with Bulk API 2.0.”

Report exports. A report already filters and groups. In Lightning Experience, Salesforce offers two views: “Formatted Report”, which keeps “the report header, groupings, and filter details” and exports only to .xlsx, and “Details Only”, which exports “each row without formatting.” The limits differ by view. Details Only as XLS or CSV has no row cap of its own, though spreadsheets do. A formatted tabular or summary report stops at 100,000 rows and 100 columns, and a formatted matrix report at 2,000 rows. One catch matters here: “Long text and rich text fields are truncated to 255 characters.” A case description or a long comment can be cut off in a report export. (Salesforce on report exports)

As our own reading: a report is good for counting and for a summary, and weak for the full text of a case. Data Loader suits a precise, written scope. The weekly export suits a scope that genuinely wants whole objects.

How a deal moved through its stages

The movement is the valuable part, and Salesforce keeps it in two lists on every opportunity. (Salesforce on opportunity history)

Stage History. “Anytime a user changes the Amount, Probability, Stage, or Close Date fields on an opportunity, a new entry is added to the Stage History related list.” Every entry “include[s] details of the change and who made it.” The admin can’t choose these fields; they are always tracked. And the line that matters most for an old org: “Unlike field history data for other objects, which is retained for a limited time, opportunity stage history data isn’t automatically deleted.” A ten-year-old org can hold ten years of how its deals moved.

Opportunity Field History. This tracks the other opportunity fields the admin chose to track. It follows the general field history rules below.

For a buyer, Stage History is the record of a sales process: where deals stall, how amounts change before a close, how long a won deal took against a lost one. With the customer removed, the shape is still there.

How a case was worked out

A case has three parts worth knowing before a scope is written.

The case itself. The description of the problem and its fields. Salesforce’s five steps put it in order: identify the customer, record the case details, resolve, communicate, close. (Salesforce on cases)

Case comments. Salesforce says support reps “add, edit, and delete public and private case notes,” and “All comments appear in the Case Comments related list.” Comments can stay private or be made public to the case’s contact. (Salesforce on case comments)

Case History. “Any time a user modifies any of the standard or custom fields whose history is set to be tracked on the case, a new entry is added to the Case History related list.” Entries hold “the date, time, nature of the change, and who made the change.” Changes made by Web-to-Case, assignment or escalation rules are listed under the Automated Case User. Salesforce also says “Modifications to the related lists on the case are not tracked in the case history.” (Salesforce on case history)

Status changes, escalations and reassignments are the diagnosis in outline. The comments are the diagnosis in words.

What field history keeps, and for how long

Outside Stage History, history is limited. Salesforce says: “When Field Audit Trail is turned off, Salesforce retains field history data for up to 18 months, and up to 24 months via the API. If Field Audit Trail is turned on, Salesforce retains field history data until you manually delete it.” For history that is 18 to 24 months old, Salesforce says to “Use Data Loader or the queryAll() API.” (Salesforce on field history)

Three more points from the same page shape what an old org can show.

Tracking starts on the day it was switched on. Salesforce “excludes changes made before this date and time.”
Long text is not kept. For fields over 255 characters, Salesforce “records only that the field was edited,” not the before and after values.
History sits in its own objects, such as AccountHistory for accounts, named after the object they track.

Note these in your counts, so the gaps are known before anyone writes a scope. An org with stage history back to the start but case history for 18 months is still a strong record. It just needs to be described honestly.

What the file contains

The data export service delivers “a zip archive of CSV files”. Salesforce’s page lists what changes the contents. (Salesforce on the data export)

“Formula (derived) and roll-up summary fields are always excluded from exports.”
“If your org uses divisions, data from all divisions is included in the export.”
With person accounts, “all account fields are included in the account data,” and person account records are included in the contact data.
“For Chatter posts and comments, we export up to 1000 characters.”
Salesforce advises that any process reading the files should “rely on the column headings in the CSV files, rather than the position of the columns.”

Data Loader and report exports produce one file per run, shaped by the query or the report. Data Loader writes CSV. A report writes .xlsx, .xls or .csv, depending on the view.

Here is our own reading of what that means. The account file is mostly names and contact details. The opportunity file and its history show the deals and how they moved. The case file, its comments and its history show the problems and how they were solved. The first is not what the work looks like. The other two are.

The limits

Salesforce publishes the limits that shape a big export. (source)

The interval. Backups can be generated “manually once every 7 days (for weekly export) or 29 days (for monthly export).” In Professional and Developer Edition, only every 29 days.
The size. Each zip “contains one or more .csv files and can be up to 512 MB (approximately).” A larger org gets several zips.
The download. “Users can download files one at a time, with a 60 second wait between each download.”
The window. “Zip files are deleted 48 hours after the email is sent (not including weekends).” Salesforce’s example: an email sent on a Friday means the file is deleted on Tuesday.
No sandbox. “The data export service isn’t supported in sandboxes.”

None of these stop a normal company. The 48 hours matter most. If nobody downloads them within the 48 hours, the files are gone and the wait for the next one begins.

The personal data in it

A CRM is a list of people before it is anything else. Every account and contact has a name, and most have an email address and a phone number. Person accounts are individual customers by definition. Case descriptions and comments hold what customers said, sometimes their address, sometimes things about their health or family they mentioned while explaining the problem. Cases that came in by email carry the customer’s own words. The staff who changed each record are named in every history entry.

micro1 publishes how it handles this. “Personally identifiable information (PII) is removed when relevant, access is restricted to a limited number of authorized team members, and customer data is processed through isolated pipelines that prevent it from being commingled with other engagements.” On cleaning beforehand: “Does my company need to anonymize its data before transferring it? No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.”

It also publishes the checks the company keeps. “Data is retained only for agreed periods, companies have the opportunity to review representative samples before use, and deletion requests are honored according to the terms of the engagement.” On ownership: “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.”

What that means in practice, as our own advice:

Agree what is removed before any export. micro1 puts “De-identified before sharing” in the list it confirms “Before any participation”.
Leave out what is not the work. Contact details, person accounts, and any payment or billing fields are not how a deal was won or a case was closed.
Use the sample review. Ask to see representative samples of your own opportunities and cases, after de-identification, before prepared data is used.
Read your own privacy notice. What you told customers about their details is a question for your counsel before the scope is signed.
Don’t edit or delete records yourself. The history lists exist to show what changed; editing changes the record. The de-identification step exists for this.

What is never included

micro1 does not publish one fixed list of what stays out, for CRM data or any other. It says a company’s data is kept separate from other companies’ data, and that personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before it’s shared with third parties.

Here is what we tell owners to keep out, as our own advice, not micro1’s:

payment details, card numbers and bank details, wherever they sit in the org;
Social Security numbers and tax IDs typed into a case comment or a custom field;
health information that customers mentioned and staff wrote down;
records about minors;
attorney-client threads, and cases about a dispute in the hands of your lawyer;
accounts and cases for a client whose contract says its information stays its own;
staff records, if HR ever used the same org;
attachments and files, unless the scope names them, since the export only includes them when the box is ticked.

What this means for a company of thirty or more

Here is what a company of 30 to 150 usually keeps in Salesforce, as our own description and not a list from micro1.

A services firm keeps its opportunities from first call to signed proposal, with the stage changes and the amount revised along the way. A distributor or manufacturer keeps the cases: the order that arrived wrong, the part that failed, the comment that names the cause and the fix. A trade contractor with an office team keeps the quotes as opportunities and the warranty calls as cases. In each, the history lists show how the people in the business decide.

The customer is removed. The price may be removed. What is left still shows how a deal moves and how a problem gets solved. The CRM records page goes through which parts of a customer history show that. The email archives page covers the mailboxes that cases arriving through Email-to-Case start from. Why 30 people is micro1’s published line is on the page for companies with 30 or more staff.

micro1’s own pages put payments “typically ranging from $100K to over $3M”, in three tiers of $100K-500K, $500K-3M and $3M+ (indicative, not an offer). Its estimator calls the figure an “Indicative estimate only,” and says the final payout “is determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.” We can only show you the band.

Check the export

If an agreement asks for an export, check it before it goes anywhere. Five checks, as our own advice:

The files. Open the zip and list the CSV files. Only the agreed objects should be there.
The columns. Open each file and confirm only the agreed fields are present.
The dates. Sort by created date and find the oldest and newest record. They should match the agreed range.
The counts. Compare the rows with your own counts. If the export came as several zips, add them up.
The window. Download within 48 hours, keep the files somewhere access-controlled, and note who ran the export.

Other office systems

Salesforce rarely stands alone. If the sales team worked in HubSpot before or beside it, the HubSpot export guide covers contacts, deals and notes. If support ran in a help desk, the Zendesk export guide covers tickets. The mail behind both sits in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, covered in the Microsoft 365 export guide. How names and details are taken out is on how de-identification works.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain the process and give you a range with our estimate. The estimate is ours, not an offer. You apply to micro1 yourself, through the button on this page, with counts, not files. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing. We never see your org or your exports. Why buyers want records like these at all, and what they leave out, is on what data buyers actually want from a trade business. How the records are protected is on how it’s safe, and what happens once you have applied is on what happens after you apply.

Worth two minutes to see your range? Find the oldest opportunity first.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Do we have to export Salesforce to apply to micro1?

No. micro1’s estimator asks how many employees, how many years of data and where the company is headquartered. Its published steps put contracting before delivery, where it says “You securely transfer your data through our APIs or other approved methods.” Count first; export only after an agreement names the scope.

Which Salesforce editions have the weekly export?

Salesforce says the weekly export is available in Enterprise, Performance and Unlimited Editions, and the monthly export in all editions except Database.com. In Professional Edition and Developer Edition, backup files can be generated only every 29 days.

Who in our org can run the data export?

Salesforce names the “Weekly Data Export” permission. It says users with it “can view all exported data and all custom objects and fields,” and that it is “granted by default only to the System Administrator profile because it enables wide visibility.” Only active users can run export jobs.

How long do we have to download the export?

Salesforce says the zip files “are deleted 48 hours after the email is sent (not including weekends).” Files download one at a time, with a 60 second wait between each. Each zip holds one or more CSV files and can be up to about 512 MB.

Can we see how an opportunity moved through its stages?

Yes. Salesforce says any change to the Amount, Probability, Stage or Close Date fields adds an entry to the Stage History related list, and that opportunity stage history “isn’t automatically deleted.” Other field history is kept for up to 18 months, or 24 months through the API, unless Field Audit Trail is on.

Does a Salesforce export include the case comments?

Salesforce says all case comments appear in the Case Comments related list, and that comments can be private or public. Its data export pages do not list object by object what each file holds, so check the file list in the zip against the agreed scope before anything goes anywhere.

Should we strip customer names out of Salesforce first?

Our advice: don’t edit the org to apply. micro1 says a company does not need to anonymize its data before transferring it, because it “has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.” Agree in writing which objects and fields are in scope and which are removed.