How to export your MT5 trade history (HTML or Excel report)
By the Trading Journal team · Updated · 5 min read
Before you start
- Use the desktop terminal (Windows or Mac). The MT5 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 History tab
Open the Toolbox from View → Toolbox or with Ctrl+T. At the bottom of the terminal, click the History tab.
2. Choose what each row shows
Right-click anywhere in the list. MT5 can show the same history in different ways:
- Positions — one row per trade, from entry to exit, with its profit. This is what most people mean by «my trades».
- Deals — every single fill: each entry, each partial close, each exit, plus deposits and withdrawals.
- Orders — what you asked the server to do, including orders that never filled.
For a journal or a review, pick Positions. The report includes the deals anyway, so nothing is lost.
3. Pick the period: All History
Right-click again and choose All History, or a custom period. The report contains exactly what the tab shows — if the tab shows the last month, so will the file. Exporting all of it once is simplest: a good journal skips trades it already has.
4. Save the report
Right-click → Report and choose a format:
- HTML — opens in a browser, easy to read and to share;
- Open XML — an Excel workbook (
.xlsx) with the same tables.
Both hold the same data. Pick a folder you can find again and save.
5. 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 — a journal or a script may then read 1.08500 as a date or lose the seconds. If you want to look at it in Excel, open a copy.
What is in the report
- The header: account number, name, broker, account currency and the date of the report.
- Positions, Orders and Deals — the three views from step 2, as tables. Commission and swap have their own columns; a partial close shows up as several deals of one position.
- The summary: balance, total net profit, gross profit and loss, profit factor, expected payoff, drawdown, the number of trades and the share of winners.
The summary is computed over the period you exported — what each number means: MT5 report metrics explained. If you exported a month, the profit factor is for that month.
When something looks wrong
- Trades are missing. The History tab showed a shorter period than you think. 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 lines; 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 History tab, not from the tester.
- Several accounts. Export each one separately: log in to an account, export, then the next.
MetaTrader 4 is different
MT4 has an Account History tab and saves a Detailed Report (.htm), and it exports only the period the tab shows, counted by close time. Step by step: How to export your MT4 account statement; the short version for every platform is in How to export your history.
What to do with the file
Read the summary for a quick look, or upload the file 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.
This guide is part of How to keep an MT4/MT5 trading journal.