How to export trade history from MetaTrader 5

I put off exporting my history for months. It felt like admin. Then I tried to answer a simple question about my own trading: do I lose more on Mondays? The terminal couldn't tell me. The report could, once it was out of MT5 and somewhere I could sort it.

Where your history lives in MT5

Everything sits in the Toolbox at the bottom of the terminal. If you can't see it, press Ctrl+T or open it from the View menu. The History tab holds what has already happened on this account. Open trades are in the Trade tab, not here.

History can show the same account three ways:

• Positions: one row per trade, from open to close. This is the view you want for a journal.
• Deals: every single execution. A trade you closed in two parts shows up as more than one deal.
• Orders: every order you placed, filled or not.

Step by step: save the report

1. Open the History tab in the Toolbox.
2. Right-click anywhere in the list and choose Positions.
3. Right-click again and pick the period: All History, Last 3 Months, Last Month or Custom Period, where you set the dates yourself.
4. Right-click once more and choose Report, then Open XML (MS Office Excel 2007). The other choice is HTML (Internet Explorer).
5. Pick a folder and a file name. Put the account and the dates in the name. You'll thank yourself in three months.

The same Report menu has Overview (Alt+E), a fuller report that's also under View > Reports. It shows summaries, results by month and long versus short. You can save that one as HTML or PDF. It's good for a look back. For a journal you want the history report from step 4, because it lists every trade as a row.

Example: one week on one account

• Account: a demo account, history for 10-14 November.
• View: Positions. Period: Custom Period, 10 November to 14 November.
• Report saved as Open XML (Excel), named demo-2026-11-10-to-14.xlsx.
• Inside: one row per trade, with balance operations listed separately.
• Result: one file you can sort, filter or import, with every closed trade of the week as a row.

Which format to pick

Excel is the one to keep. Each trade is a row with its open and close time, symbol, type, volume, prices, commission, swap and profit. You can sort it, filter it and import it into a journal.

HTML opens in a browser and reads nicely. It's harder to do anything with. If you saved HTML by mistake, just run the report again and choose Excel.

What the report doesn't tell you

The report is a record of what the market did with your orders. That's all. It doesn't know:

• why you took the trade;
• where your stop was meant to be when you planned it;
• whether you followed your plan or broke it;
• how you felt when you clicked.

That's the part a journal adds. Without it you can measure results. You can't learn much from them. A trade that lost 1R because the setup failed and a trade that lost 1R because you chased it look the same in a spreadsheet.

How often to export

Once a week works for most people. Pick a fixed time, say Friday after the close. Export the week, add your notes while you still remember the trades and move on. If you leave it a month, half the notes turn into guesses.

Exporting the same days twice isn't a problem if your journal skips trades it already has. Plain spreadsheets don't do that. You end up hunting for duplicates by hand.

Common questions

Tomky, Dojiwave · Updated 14 November 2026