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Export your business data to Excel

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Excel is a powerful tool to work with data. From inside Business Central, you can open any list in Excel. You can even modify data in Excel and then submit it back to Business Central. The same capability makes it easy for you to take your data with you if you decide to cancel your subscription.

Opening lists in Excel

You can open data in Excel from any journal, list, or worksheet. You just open the page that you want, and then choose Open in Excel. For example, open the list of customers (search for Customers), and then choose Open in Excel. Your browser prompts you to open or save the generated Excel workbook.

Note

Use this option when you don't want to publish your changes back to Business Central.

Each list includes some columns. The export to Excel includes any columns that are in your current view. Change the columns by opening the shortcut menu for any column, and then specifying which columns that you want to see. The list of columns is different for most lists. The columns reflect the structure in the database that stores your data. If you aren't sure what type of data a certain column contains, add it to your view. You can always remove it again.

Edit data in Excel

Your Business Central experience includes an add-in for Excel so you can edit data in Excel. For more information, see Analyzing Financial Statements in Microsoft Excel.

Exporting data to other finance systems

If you decide to cancel your subscription for Business Central, you can export your data to Excel and take it with you to your next finance system.

You can export all pages, but that might be more than you really need. Consider exporting the following essential pages, and remember to add all columns:

  • Chart of Accounts
  • Customers
  • Vendors
  • Banks
  • Items

If you want to export all your financial transactions, it's a large amount of data, so the export often takes more than a few minutes. The financial transactions are shown on the General Ledger Entries page.

We recommend that you also consider exporting data from the following pages:

  • Customer Ledger Entries
  • Vendor Ledger Entries
  • Bank Account Ledger Entries
  • Item Ledger Entries
  • General Posting Setup
  • Customer Posting Groups
  • Vendor Posting Groups
  • Item Posting Groups
  • Bank Posting Group
  • G/L Budgets
  • G/L Budget Entries
  • Sales Quotes
  • Sales Invoices
  • Purchase Invoices
  • Contacts
  • Salespeople

Note

If you have set up more than one company in Business Central, you must export the relevant data from each company.

Note

You must have at least one of the following permissions to open or edit data in Excel:

  • Permission set D365 Excel Export Action
  • System permission 6110 Allow Action Export To Excel.

For more information, see Get an overview of a user's permissions.

See also

Canceling Your Subscription for Business Central
Importing Business Data from Other Finance Systems
Analyzing Financial Statements in Microsoft Excel
Finance
General Business Functionality
Work with Business Central

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