How to open trade history on MetaTrader 5, step by step

Five steps from Ctrl+T to a clean list of closed trades, with the period and view settings that cause most empty-history problems.

Opening the trade history in MetaTrader 5 sounds trivial until the first time the tab is empty, shows only today, or lists rows that do not look like trades. This guide is the step-by-step version for the desktop terminal: where the History tab is, how to choose a period, how to switch between positions, orders and deals, and how to read the first rows correctly. Menu names can differ slightly between builds and brokers, so where the exact wording matters this page says to check your own terminal.

Step 1: open the Toolbox

The history lives in the Toolbox, the panel at the bottom of the terminal that also holds the Trade, Exposure and Journal tabs. Press Ctrl+T, or choose View and then Toolbox from the menu. If the panel is hidden or squashed to a thin strip, our page on the MT5 Toolbox not showing has five fixes.

Step 2: click the History tab

Among the tabs you will usually see Trade, Exposure, History, News, Mailbox, Calendar, Company, Alerts, Articles, Code Base, Experts and Journal. The tab called History is the one with your closed trades. The tab called Journal is something else: it is the terminal’s log of connections and Expert Advisor messages, as explained in the MT5 Journal tab explained. Many people open the wrong tab first.

Step 3: choose the period

This is where most “empty history” problems come from. The History tab shows only the period you select. Right-click anywhere in the list and a menu offers ranges such as today, the last three days, the last week, the last month, the last three months, all history and a custom period. If you chose a short range, older trades are hidden even though they exist. Choose a wider range, or all history, to check. With a custom period you enter start and end dates yourself.

Step 4: choose positions, orders or deals

The same right-click menu lets you switch the type of list. In recent builds the options are Positions, Orders and Deals. Each answers a different question:

• Positions lists each position as one row, from opening to closing, with the open price, close price and the resulting profit. This is the closest to what traders mean by a trade.
• Orders lists the instructions sent to the server, including pending orders that were cancelled or expired. See pending orders in MT5 history.
• Deals lists each execution. One position has an opening deal and a closing deal, and a partly closed one has more. The deals view also holds balance operations such as deposits.

If one view looks confusing, the identifiers behind them are explained in deal, order and position IDs, and the difference between netting and hedging accounts is covered in hedging vs netting trade history.

Step 5: read the first row correctly

A typical positions row shows the open time, a ticket, the symbol, the type (buy or sell), the volume, the open price, any stop loss and take profit, the close time, the close price, commission, swap and profit. A few details save confusion:

• Times are the broker’s server time, not your computer’s. See MT5 server time explained.
• The Profit column normally excludes commission and swap, which sit in their own columns. Your result is the three added together, as shown in MT5 commission explained.
• Rows with no symbol are usually balance entries, such as a deposit, withdrawal or credit. See balance and deposit rows in the history.
• Comments such as “sl”, “tp” or “so” tell you how a position ended; the comments guide explains them.

If the list is still empty

• You may be on the wrong account or not connected. Check the title of the window and the connection indicator.
• The period may be too short. Switch to all history.
• A new demo account has no closed trades yet.
• Some brokers limit how far back the server returns history in the terminal.

A longer checklist is on MT5 trade history not showing. If you want to read the same data from your phone, see MT5 trade history on phone.

From the History tab to a journal

Once you can open the history, the next question is what to do with it. You can export a report from the same right-click menu, as described in how to export MT5 trade history, or you can let a journal read it for you. AI Trading Journal is a Windows desktop app for MetaTrader 5 that reads the account history on the first run, then adds new closed trades every 5 minutes. It creates one entry per closed position, with partial closes combined and dated by the last exit, and the result is profit plus commission plus swap. It is read-only, so it never places, modifies or closes a trade, and the journal stays in a file on your own PC. Notion is an optional extra copy.

A worked example (hypothetical)

You open the History tab and see three rows from today. You believe you traded last Tuesday, so you right-click, choose a custom period from last Monday to last Friday and switch to Positions. Seven positions appear. One has a profit of 42.50, commission −1.40 and swap 0.00, so its result is 41.10. A row with no symbol and a positive amount turns out to be a deposit. You now have a clean list you can export, or that a journal will already have imported.

Limits of this page

• Menu wording, tab names and the available periods vary by build, broker and language.
• The web terminal and the mobile apps use different screens.
• How far back history goes depends on what your broker’s server keeps.
• AI Trading Journal is our product and works only with the Windows desktop terminal.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons