ChatGPT Export Data to Email Not Working - Still an Issue
Hi OpenAI team,
I’m experiencing similar issues as others on this forum have reported in the past few days regarding the export data to email feature. However, the reason I’m creating a new ticket is that the previous discussions weren’t particularly helpful. Responses like “it should work in a few hours” haven’t resolved the issue. Newsflash: it’s been way more than a few hours, and it’s still not working.
I want to export my data for further usage—not to mention for privacy reasons. There are plenty of chats in my history that are highly experimental, you could say. Either way, the ability to export data is critical to me, and it’s frustrating when the system says “export successful” but nothing actually happens.
Please do not close this ticket with a generic response like “it should work in a few hours.” It has been days (maybe even weeks) since this issue began, and despite exporting multiple times, I’ve received nothing.
I’m not crazy, and I’m not stupid—this feature simply isn’t working. Please investigate and fix this.
Thanks!
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I second this bug! It’s been going on for a few days for me. I’ve been trying relentlessly to download my chats but no luck. Can someone please look into this, it is frustrating.
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+1. The export function as described doesn’t work.
Maybe it helps to know that when selecting from the top righthand menu the option Settings > Data controls and in the row which says Export data click the ‘Export’ button, most of the time a green pop-up flashes quickly at the top of the browser window. Sometimes it does display as one would expect and says ‘Successfully exported data. You should receive an email shortly with your data.’.
I’ve tried the export option now multiple times in the past 3 days with no success so far, meaning I never received the promised email.
My email provider is Gmail and I obviously checked all possible folders were messages might go (spam, trash, all mail, verified mail routing rules).
Other info that might give context: I have a ChatGPT Plus Subscription.
Reporting this is obviously step 1, but can I/we help in some way by providing more specific detail?
2 Likes
Is there something consistently breaking with the ability to export chat content? This seems to be happening pretty reliably for a few days now, working for a little bit and then ceasing to work a while later.
I’ve been trying to export all my chats since the first time I ever used this site to today, so I’ve got a lot for the export system to process unfortunately, but I won’t delete any of my chats explicitly because I would like to save them all.
Sources:
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/i-cant-export-my-chat-history/1022465/
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/issues-exporting-chatgpt-data/191637/
- (this thread, of course)
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/chat-gpt-export-data-to-email-not-working/1022798/
Off-topic but may be related:
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/chatgpt-export-not-exporting-latest-conversations/938439/
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/incomplete-data-export-with-conversations-json/1019950
- community(.)openai(.)com/t/export-chat-history-a-suggestion/311468
There seems to be a larger issue at play with the support infrastructure.
Perhaps we need a way to selectively export individual or large batches of conversations, instead of the entire account’s worth of conversations?
3 Likes
I have also had this problem.
This issue started with me in October 2024 and after several attempts it came through. This time, I have tried everyday for the last week, to no avail. Now I’m here researching the issue, which does not seem resolved.
I really need my monthly exports. How will OpenAI address the issue in this thread? How long? If at all?
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It’s Dec 3rd and I’m still having this problem. it comes to my email but when I try to save it it is unsuccessful and the file that does download is only 1kb. FRUSTRATING!
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I also have this issue, but weirdly only affects Gmail accounts. I have 2 Gmail accounts and 1 Outlook (Microsoft) account, and only the Outlook one works correctly.
2 Likes
I’ve patiently tried the ‘export data’ function for the past 11 days: click the button every day (sometimes twice a day) and see if an email was received to download the export. Unfortunately to no avail. I believe this confirms it is not a minor or temporary glitch and something more persistent.
The interesting piece of information @alkautsardealka97 added to the conversation drew my attention. I’m too a Gmail user.
So, for testing purposes, I signed up to ChatGPT with another non-Google hosted email address, started a short conversation and eagerly hit the ‘export data’ button. Almost instantly an email showed up in my inbox with subject ‘ChatGPT - Your data export is ready’ including a link to download my data export. Clicking the link resulted in the download of a ZIP-file with the promised content!
A few observations:
- When signing up with ChatGPT, an email address verification is required. I had to press the ‘resend email’ link to actually receive the email with subject ‘ChatGPT - Verify your email’. Interestingly enough, about 25 minutes later, I received another email with subject ‘ChatGPT - Verify your email’, which I believe was the first one that should have hit my inbox, but arrived quite a bit delayed.
- The export I was able to successfully download did include what I expected. That export is of course very small and not comparable with an export that is to include many conversations.
So, what’s next? Changing the email address on an account is not possible. Creating a new account and for future data export purposes continue from there could be an option, but doesn’t help me with my existing conversations – the reason I’m looking for an export in the first place.
But what can we as users of ChatGPT do with the collective observations and test executions we brought together so far? None of us can do analysis beyond looking at the user interface from every possible angle. It seems like we’re we are at a dead end. We need someone who has hands-on back-end insights to help us move forward with this.
Any suggestions on how to attract participation from the right OpenAI people to participate in this conversation?
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@gershonj your message above gave me some hope because the email address I use for my openai account forwards to gmail. But last night I reconfigured it to forward to a different provider and I still am not receiving exports. So perhaps it’s a gmail thing, or perhaps it has something to do with the size of the export or even its contents. What’s frustrating, as you point out, is the lack of acknowledgment from openai.
I reported this via the this mechanism a little while ago, and just updated my report to include a link to this thread. Hopefully that will attract some participation.
Perhaps if more people report the issue it would help?
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@martylamb Thank you for also testing and the tip – I also reported this problem in great detail with a reference to this thread.
It was not easy finding the right entry point for reporting a problem or bug!
N2U (the ChatGPT team leader who is often active in the forum) said the “Bugs” tag is the right way to report bugs. Yet, 21 days after this topic was created, the exporting problem still hasn’t been resolved or noticed.
Maybe we should make this topic more active so it gains more attention from them.