Export your data

What you can take out#

The grid sits over the same records the rest of Connect reads, one sheet per record type, so an export is a view of live data rather than a separate reporting copy. Sort, filter, group, freeze, resize and reorder all shape what you get, and a saved view is a repeatable export definition rather than just a convenience.

• Relationships and pipeline: companies, people, leads, prospects, deals.
• Work: follow-ups, cases, onboarding.
• Communication: conversations and calls.
• What Connect knows: knowledge, memory, and the file index.

Message bodies, call audio and file contents are not what a sheet holds; the sheets carry the records and their fields. If you need the content of a conversation rather than its row, the conversation itself is where that lives.

Doing the export#

1. Open the data grid and choose the sheet you want.

   Result You are looking at that record type with the grid's own filtering and grouping available.

2. Shape the view before exporting: filter to the rows that matter, order the columns the way the recipient needs them, and group if the grouping is part of the point.

   Result The export follows the view. Exporting everything and cutting it down in a spreadsheet afterwards is how personal data ends up in files that did not need it.

3. Save the view if you will do this again.

   Result Next month's export is the same definition rather than the same twenty clicks and a slightly different result.

4. Export to CSV and open the file.

   Result This is the verification, and it is worth actually doing: check the row count against what the grid showed, and check the first and last rows rather than only the header.

Why a cell can look escaped#

CSV export neutralises formulas. A cell whose value begins with a character a spreadsheet treats as the start of a formula is written so that the spreadsheet shows it as text instead of evaluating it. This is deliberate and it is a security property, not a formatting bug: a CSV is data your business did not author — a prospect's company name, a caller's spoken note — and a spreadsheet that evaluates whatever it finds is a well-known way to turn an export into a command.

The practical consequence is small. Numbers, dates and ordinary text are untouched. What you notice is the occasional cell that started with a leading equals, plus or minus sign — most often in free-text fields — arriving as visible text.

When the export is not what you expected#

Fewer rows than you thought

A filter or a group is still applied. The grid's counts are computed by the database rather than derived from a page of rows, so the number it shows is the number you get.

A column is missing

It was hidden or reordered out of the view. Column choice is part of the view, and the saved view is what makes that reproducible.

Characters look wrong in a spreadsheet

That is the spreadsheet's import encoding rather than the file. Import as UTF-8 rather than letting a double-click guess.

A field you can see on a record is not in the sheet

Not every field of every record is a grid column. The record's own screen remains the complete view.

You wanted the whole workspace in one file

There is no single combined export: the sheets are separate because the records are. Export the ones you need and join them on the identifiers.

Questions#

Related#

• Files and data in Connect
• Update many records at once
• Import contacts
• Recover something that was removed
• The public API
• A spreadsheet view that is not a second database