# Export your data

Export from the data grid, which is an Excel-like view over thirteen record sheets — companies, people, leads, prospects, follow-ups, deals, conversations, calls, cases, onboarding, knowledge, files and memory. CSV is the format. Export applies your current view, so filter and choose columns first, and expect any cell that begins like a formula to come out neutralised on purpose.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/data
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/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.

> **Careful** Do not strip the neutralisation to make a file "look cleaner" before circulating it. The value is unchanged as text; what has been removed is the spreadsheet's licence to execute it. If a downstream system needs the raw value, have it read the field rather than re-enabling formula evaluation for a whole file.

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

### Does exporting change anything?

No. Reading a sheet and exporting it are read operations. Editing in the grid is different: every change goes through the service that owns the record, so the grid is not a second database with its own rules.

### Can a customer workspace export, or is it operator-only?

Both audiences have it, over the same implementation. A customer's use of Connect is bounded by their plan's allowances rather than by a smaller feature set.

### Is there an API for this instead of a file?

The developer section documents the public API, its pagination and its stable identifiers, which is the better route for anything recurring. A CSV is for a person; an API is for a system.

### What about deleted records?

A record marked deleted is not the same as one that never existed, and recovery is documented separately. An export of a sheet reflects the sheet, so check whether your view is including or excluding removed rows before treating the file as complete.

## Related

- [Files and data in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/files-data/)
- [Update many records at once](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/bulk-update-records/)
- [Import contacts](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/import-contacts/)
- [Recover something that was removed](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/how-to/recover-a-deleted-record/)
- [The public API](https://connectbyjbrh.com/developers/public-api/)
- [A spreadsheet view that is not a second database](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/grid-over-services/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §9 — the data grid, its sheets and CSV export
- docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md §5 — counts computed by the database
- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py) — `data_workspace`
- docs-source/facts.py `MEASURED` — thirteen data sheets