Export a report to Excel
For the analysis the screens do not do, and for anyone who will only ever believe a spreadsheet.
The screens answer the recurring questions. Everything else — cohort analysis, a board pack, anything crossing more dimensions than a card can show — comes out of an export.
The habit worth building is deciding the question before the export. Exporting everything and hoping is how people spend an afternoon in a pivot table and learn nothing.
Steps
Decide what question the spreadsheet answers
Write it down in one sentence first. If you cannot, the export will not help.
Export contacts scoped to a filter
All contacts, the current segment, or a custom rule set built with the advanced filter builder. Pick your columns from your schema.
Add the activity history sheet for sequence questions
A second sheet of activity history. Much larger, and the only way to analyse the order in which things happened rather than the current state.
Anything of the form "how many touches before they converted" needs this sheet.
Export before you change anything structural
Deleting an attribute or running a large bulk edit both deserve a copy first. This is your only route back.
Treat the file as sensitive
It is personal data with no access control once it has left. Export is admin-only for this reason — decide where the file will live and delete it when done.
Check it worked
Check the export contains the columns you expected before you build anything on it. An export missing the one field you needed is worth discovering now.
The parts people get wrong
- Export to Excel is on every plan, and is always a workbook rather than a raw CSV.
- The activity history sheet is what makes an export useful for auditing rather than only for migration.