Exporting Customer Data

An export takes your customer list out of Tanqory as a spreadsheet file. It is a copy rather than a move: nothing leaves the store, and every customer is still there afterwards.

The file is sent by email, to the address of the account that asked for it, rather than downloaded. That catches people out on its own, and it has a second consequence: since nothing appears in the browser, a refused export looks exactly like one that worked. Export Customers walks the dialog itself, control by control.

Before you begin

• Your role includes Export customers.
• You can reach the mailbox of the account you are signed in as, since that is the address the file is sent to.
• Go to Customers. Export is at the top right of the list.

What an export is for

The last one has steps beyond taking a file, and Handle Customer Privacy Requests has them.

What is in the file

The dialog offers twenty columns, and every one of them is ticked when it opens. Between them they cover the customer's name and contact details, their address, the tags and notes you have put on them, both marketing consents, their order totals, and when the record was created.

So the file you get by pressing Export without touching anything is close to everything you hold about everyone on the list. That is the right file to keep as a backup before a bulk change, and the wrong one to send to a supplier who asked for a mailing list.

Cutting it down takes one action. Deselect all clears every box, and you tick back the columns the file is actually for.

How it goes, start to finish

Five steps, of which only the middle three happen in the dialog.

1. Narrow the list first if you want a group, since nothing inside the dialog can filter.
2. Open Export at the top right of the Customers list, and read the address it names.
3. Choose the scope. The current page, all customers, or the search results when a search is running.
4. Choose the format and the columns, cutting the twenty down to what the file is for.
5. Press Export, then go to your mailbox. Nothing on the page confirms it, though the run itself is listed under Exports and imports, on the Settings page.

Two decisions worth making before you press Export

How much of the list. The scope works on what the Customers page is already showing, so if you want a particular group you narrow the list first. Search the Customer List covers that. The counts beside the scope options follow the list on screen rather than the store, so they cannot be used to tell the options apart.

How many columns. A file that goes to anyone outside your team should carry the columns that person needs and nothing else. Twenty columns about every customer is a large amount of personal data to put in an attachment, and the difference between that and two columns is a few seconds in the dialog.

After it arrives

The file holds personal data about real people, and it is now outside the admin, where permissions and the activity log no longer reach it. What follows from that:

• Keep it somewhere only the people who need it can open.
• Pass it on through something secure rather than as an attachment on a general thread.
• Delete it once whatever you exported it for has its own copy, since every spare copy is another place the data can leak from.
• Put the date in the filename when you save it, because nothing inside the file says when it was taken.
• Save your own copy within the week. The admin keeps the file for 7 days after the job finishes, and then only the record of the run remains.

The date matters more than it looks. An export is the list as it stood at one moment, and it starts going out of date immediately. If what you actually wanted was a group that stays current, Customer Segments does that without a file, and without a copy of your customers sitting in somebody's downloads folder.

If something goes wrong

• Nothing arrived. The file comes by email to the account that asked for it, and the dialog closes the same way whether or not it worked. The run is listed under Exports and imports, on the Settings page with its status, which is where to look before taking the export again. Export Customers walks that page.
• You sent more than you meant to. A file that has left your hands cannot be recalled. Say so to whoever received it, ask them to delete it, and cut the columns down before the next one.
• The numbers do not match the admin any more. They are not supposed to. The file is the list as it stood when you took it, and the admin has moved on since.
• A customer asks you to erase their data after you exported it. Erasing in the admin reaches the record in your store and nothing else. Copies you have already taken have to be dealt with by you, which is the strongest reason to keep few of them. Handle Customer Privacy Requests covers the request itself.

Next steps

• Export Customers
• Handle Customer Privacy Requests
• Customer Segments

Related articles

• Customer Privacy
• Bulk Edit Customers
• Search the Customer List