How do you export Salesforce data for an AI data license?
Salesforce is two products in one: a database of accounts and deals that exports cleanly, and a record of sales work that does not. The history of a deal, the notes, the email and the reason it was lost, is what makes it valuable, and it sits in places the standard export does not always reach. This page covers each route and what comes with it.
What a Salesforce org usually holds
| Accounts and contacts | Companies and the people at them, with the fields your team fills in. The identifying layer that needs the heaviest cleaning. |
| Opportunities and stages | Each deal, its stages and its outcome. The skeleton of the sales story. |
| Activities and notes | Calls logged, tasks done and the notes a rep wrote. The part that explains why a deal moved. |
| Cases and service history | If service is used, the questions customers asked and how they were resolved. |
| Reports and dashboards | Saved views of the pipeline. They show what the company measured, and are not data in themselves. |
How Salesforce data leaves the org, route by route
| Tool | What an export gives you | What is missing or needs an admin |
|---|---|---|
| The scheduled data export | A set of files of the org’s records on a schedule, run by an administrator. | Content stored outside standard records, such as some synced email and files, and fields your permissions hide. |
| Data loader or a report export | Chosen objects and fields pulled to a file, which suits a focused first sample. | It exports what you ask for, so a missed field or object is simply absent, and a report export caps how much can leave. |
| The programming interface | A complete pull, including related records and history, run by a developer or an integration partner. | It needs a person who can write and run it, and the org’s limits shape the pace. |
Tool names belong to their owners and are used only to say where records usually live. Export features change by plan and version, so check the current rules for your account.
Field permissions shape what you can export
Salesforce lets an administrator hide fields from some users. An export run by one person may be missing a field another person can see. Before running anything, ask the administrator which user will export, and whether that account can see every field you want.
Email and activity may live somewhere else
Many teams connect their inbox to Salesforce, and where those messages are stored depends on the tool. Some sit in the org, and some are held by the connecting product. Find out which before you assume the export has the conversation, since the conversation is the point of the history.
Pick the object list before the date range
A focused set beats a full dump. Accounts, opportunities, activities and notes for a chosen range of years make a coherent story, and adding every custom object makes cleaning harder without making the set richer.
What stays out of a Salesforce set
| Personal contact details | Phone numbers, personal emails and home addresses are removed or replaced with stand-in values. |
| Customer-owned data | Records a customer put into your org, or data covered by that customer’s agreement, stay out. |
| Pricing and discount terms | Current price books, discount rules and negotiated terms are kept out unless the owner decides otherwise. |
| Government and regulated accounts | Accounts with data handling rules in their contracts are screened first. |
An example, invented for illustration
Take a software reseller with 70 staff and a Salesforce org that is ten years old. The owner picks accounts, opportunities and activity notes for the last seven years, and excludes two government accounts and the price books. The administrator who runs the export is checked to be able to see every field, the connected inbox turns out to store email separately, so that is pulled in a second step. Contact details are replaced with stand-ins, and the owner approves a sample of deals with their notes.
Questions owners ask about this
Does the standard export include notes and emails?
Notes usually, if they are stored as records. Email depends on how it was connected, so check where your messages are kept before you plan around them.
Can a partner run the export for us?
Yes, under an agreement that limits what they may do with the data, and with access that is removed afterward. The company stays responsible for who sees what.
Do custom objects come along?
They can, if you ask for them. Each one needs its own look for personal information, so include only the ones that tell the sales story.
What if reps wrote very little in the notes?
The set is thinner but still useful. The stages, the dates and the outcome of each deal carry meaning on their own, and the reason a deal was lost is worth adding where it exists.
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Keep reading
Related kinds of records
- CRM history: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Zoho notes and timelines; fields alone say little.
- Closed-deal files: The data room, the model, the memo and the later review for one deal, only where the agreements allow.
- HubSpot data export: How to get the deal, its emails and its loss reason out of HubSpot, and what each route leaves behind.