Exporting your Salesforce data before you move or leave

Salesforce’s built-in Data Export Service produces CSV files of your records, weekly in Enterprise, Performance and Unlimited editions and monthly in all editions except Database.com. You can generate an export manually once every 7 days (weekly) or 29 days (monthly). The files are available to download for 48 hours after the export completes, and they are removed as soon as a new export is queued, so download each one before starting another.

Data Export Service at a glance

Item	What Salesforce says
Weekly export	Enterprise, Performance and Unlimited editions
Monthly export	All editions except Database.com
Manual frequency	Once every 7 days (weekly) or 29 days (monthly)
Download window	48 hours after the export completes
Old files	Removed when a new export is queued

What a records export misses

A CSV export of records is not the whole system. For a move or a shutdown, also plan for:

• Attachments and files, which need to be included in the export settings or exported separately.
• Metadata: custom objects, fields, page layouts, automation and reports.
• Relationships: IDs that link accounts, contacts, opportunities and activities, so the history makes sense later.
• Activity history: emails and tasks logged against records.

Timing around the contract

Treat the last day of the contract as the last day you can export. Salesforce’s post-termination return and deletion terms are in its security and privacy documentation for your services; read the one that applies to you before the end date. We have not yet verified those figures against Salesforce’s own document, so they are not in our data retention clock.

CRM history is a company record

Years of accounts, deals and support activity show how a company sells and serves customers. Nyne lists Salesforce among the CRM systems it licenses data from, de-identified. If the CRM history is about to be archived or deleted, that is worth knowing before you decide.