How to export your MT4 account statement (Detailed Report)
By the Trading Journal team · Updated · 5 min read
Before you start
- Use the desktop terminal. The MT4 mobile apps show your history, but they do not save a report file.
- Log in to the right account. A terminal shows one account at a time; the report covers only the account you are logged in to. For a prop-firm challenge, log in with the credentials the firm sent you.
- The investor (read-only) password is enough. It shows the full history and cannot place trades — handy if someone else exports for you.
Step by step
1. Open the Account History tab
Open the Terminal window from View → Terminal or with Ctrl+T. At the bottom, click Account History. Each row is one ticket: a trade, a deposit or a withdrawal.
2. Pick the period: All History
Right-click anywhere in the list. MT4 offers All History, Last 3 Months, Last Month and Custom Period. The report contains exactly what the tab shows, and the tab filters trades by their close time. Choose All History unless you need a single month: a good journal skips trades it already has.
3. Save the report
Right-click again. There are two options:
- Save as Report — the trades and a short summary;
- Save as Detailed Report — the same plus a balance chart and the statistics: profit factor, expected payoff, drawdowns, the longest winning and losing runs.
Choose Save as Detailed Report. In the save dialog, keep the type HTML Files (*.htm), pick a folder you can find again and save.
4. Leave the file as it is
Opening the file in Excel and saving it again changes dates and numbers to your computer’s regional format, and saving it as .xls turns it into a different file. If you want to look at it in Excel, open a copy.
What is in the report
- The header: account number, name, currency, leverage and the date of the report.
- Closed Transactions — every closed trade with its open and close time, size, prices, stop loss, take profit, commission, taxes, swap and profit. Deposits and withdrawals are rows of type
balance. - Open Trades — positions still open when you saved the report, with their floating profit.
- Working Orders — pending orders that have not filled. They are not trades.
- Summary — deposits and withdrawals, closed trade P/L, floating P/L, balance and equity at the moment you saved.
- Details (Detailed Report only) — gross profit and loss, total net profit, profit factor, expected payoff, absolute, maximal and relative drawdown, the number of trades, the share of winners and the longest runs.
Most of these numbers mean what they mean in MT5: MT5 report metrics explained, worked out on an example. Like there, they are computed over the period you exported.
How MT4 differs from MT5
- One row per ticket. MT5 lets you switch between Positions, Deals and Orders. MT4 has one view: one ticket is one trade, opened and closed.
- A partial close creates a new ticket. The closed part keeps the old ticket; the rest of the volume continues under a new ticket. Many brokers write
to #…on the old ticket andfrom #…on the new one, but the comment depends on the broker. In our journal each ticket is its own trade; the comment tells you which ones belonged together. - Open trades are not history. A trade open when you exported is in Open Trades, not in Closed Transactions. Export again after it closes.
When something looks wrong
- Trades are missing. The tab showed a shorter period than you think, or the trade closed after the period ended. Choose All History and export again.
- Times are off by a few hours. MetaTrader writes the broker’s server time, often «New York + 7 hours», not your local time. A journal has to convert it — how time zones in MT4/MT5 reports work.
- The totals don’t match your broker’s statement. Commission, swap and deposits are separate columns and rows; check which ones the total includes — why journal P&L can differ from the broker.
- The file has no account history at all. The strategy tester also saves reports, but those are backtests, not your account. Export from the Account History tab.
- Several accounts. Export each one separately: log in to an account, export, then the next.
What to do with the file
Read the Details for a quick look, or upload the .htm to a trading journal and see each day, each symbol and each mistake on its own. In ours, the upload takes about a minute and the same file twice adds nothing. Reading MT4 reports is new for us: if a number looks off, press Report a data problem on the import and a person checks it.
On MetaTrader 5 instead? How to export your MT5 trade history.
This guide is part of How to keep an MT4/MT5 trading journal.