How to save your MT5 trade history report as HTML, Excel or PDF

The formats the terminal offers, how to get a PDF anyway, and how to keep reports you can still read later.

Sooner or later you need your MetaTrader 5 results outside the terminal: to send to a mentor, to keep with your tax papers, to attach to a prop firm support ticket or simply to read on a tablet. The platform can produce a report, but the options are narrower than most traders expect, and the PDF question comes up constantly. This page explains which report formats the terminal offers, how to get a PDF anyway, what each format keeps and loses, and how to build a habit of saving reports that you can still read in two years.

What the terminal can produce

In the Toolbox, on the History tab, a right-click opens a menu with a Report entry. Depending on your build it offers an HTML report and an Open XML report, which is the format Excel opens as a workbook. Menu names and the exact choices can differ slightly between builds, so check your own terminal rather than trusting any screenshot you find online. The report is generated from whatever period and view the History tab currently shows, which is why the period matters; see history period and custom date range before you export anything.

Getting a PDF from an HTML report

The terminal does not need to export PDF itself. Save the HTML report to a folder you can find again, open it in your browser, and use the browser’s print command with the destination set to save as PDF. Most current browsers and Windows itself provide such a destination. Before saving, check three settings in the print dialog: the paper size, the margins and whether background graphics are included, because wide tables may be cut at the right edge on a narrow page. Landscape orientation usually solves that.

• Open the saved HTML file in the browser and scroll through it once; a report with a blank section often means the period was empty.
• Print to PDF in landscape and glance at the last page to be sure no column was lost.
• Name the file with the account number, the period and the date, for example 12345678_2026-Q3_saved-2026-11-10.pdf, so it is clear later what it covers.
• Store the PDF next to the original HTML or xlsx, because the PDF is a picture of the data, not the data.

What a report keeps and what it loses

A terminal report lists deals and summary figures. It does not contain your reasons for a trade, your emotional state, screenshots or whether you followed your plan. It also reflects the broker’s server clock; if you want times in your own zone see converting server time in Excel. And because the report covers the period you chose, two reports for overlapping periods will double count if you add them together. Keep one rule: reports are for sharing and archiving, a journal is for learning.

Which format for which job

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader needs to send a quarter’s results to an accountant. They set the History period to the exact three months, right-click and save the HTML report, then open it in a browser and print to PDF in landscape. The report shows 84 closed trades, a net profit figure and a deals list. The trader also saves the Open XML version so the accountant can total columns. A month later the trader exports a report for the next quarter and notices the first week overlaps by two days because the period was set loosely. Since each file carries its own period in the name, the overlap is easy to spot and fix. All numbers are invented for illustration.

When the report is not enough

If you review your trading regularly you will want more than a static document: totals by weekday, hour and symbol, a calendar of daily results and your own notes next to each trade. AI Trading Journal is a Windows app for MetaTrader 5 only. It reads closed trades from the terminal on your PC and adds new ones every 5 minutes, and the journal lives in a file in your Documents folder. Its Export Report to Excel button produces a workbook with a Summary tab of six charts, Daily and Trades tabs and calendar tabs, with live formulas, so you can share a readable file without hand-building one. It is read-only and never places or closes a trade. Notion is an optional extra copy, never required.

For the connection between report numbers and your own statistics, the MT5 trading report in Excel page goes through the summary rows, and MT5 trading statistics explains how each is calculated.

Limits and cautions

• Menu names and report layouts differ between builds and brokers; check your own terminal.
• A report is only as complete as the period you selected and the history your broker keeps; see how far back history goes.
• Do not share a report publicly if it shows your account number and balance.
• Nothing here is tax, legal or financial advice.

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