MT5 trading report in Excel: export, charts and a finished report

MetaTrader 5 exports your history to Excel but draws no charts. Here is what the export holds, how to build the missing charts, and a faster route.

MetaTrader 5 can save your trade history as an Excel file in two clicks. What it cannot do is turn that file into a picture of how you trade: there is no equity curve to read, no split by weekday or hour, and no chart of which symbols pay you. This page shows what the built-in export gives you, how to build the missing charts by hand, and how to get a finished report without building anything.

What MT5's own report contains

Open the Toolbox at the bottom of the terminal, click the History tab, and choose the period (all history, last month, last three months or a custom range). Right-click inside the list, choose Report, then pick the Excel option (the menu calls it Open XML, MS Office Excel 2007) or the HTML option. The terminal saves the file and opens it.

The file lists your closed positions, orders and deals, plus balance operations such as deposits and withdrawals, with summary figures near the end. Menu wording can differ slightly between terminal builds and brokers, so look for the Report entry if yours is labelled differently.

Good: it is complete, it comes straight from the terminal, and every trade has its ticket, times, prices, commission, swap and profit.
Missing: charts of any kind, results split by weekday, hour or symbol, a running drawdown figure, and any place for your own notes.
Awkward: the layout is built for reading a statement, not for sorting. Deposits and withdrawals sit in the same list as trades, and a trade that was closed in parts can appear on several rows.

Three ways to get from export to report

	Manual build in Excel	Journal template	Report from the app
Effort each month	An hour or more	Paste trades, check formulas	A few clicks
Charts	You build them	Usually a fixed set	Six charts, built for you
Your notes	Separate	A column you fill in	Taken from your Notion trade pages
Risk of a wrong formula	Highest: you wrote them	Medium: you inherit them	Formulas are visible and editable
Cost	Free	Free or paid	Included with AI Trading Journal

Option 1: build the report by hand

This is the free route and it teaches you the numbers. Start from the exported file and follow these steps.

Clean the list. Copy the closed positions to a new sheet and delete deposits, withdrawals and any open positions. One row should equal one finished trade.
Add one net column. Net result is profit plus commission plus swap. Many traders chart profit alone and overstate their edge, because costs are separate columns in the export.
Add helper columns. Close date, weekday (use the WEEKDAY function) and close hour (use the HOUR function) are enough for most charts.
Build the headline figures. Win rate is the count of trades with a positive net divided by all trades. Profit factor is the sum of the winners divided by the absolute sum of the losers. Expectancy is the average net per trade.
Insert pivot charts. Net by weekday, net by close hour and net by symbol each take one pivot table and one chart. A line of the running total is the equity curve.

Check the first month against the summary in MT5. If your net profit and trade count match the terminal, the sheet is sound. If not, look for balance rows you forgot to remove and for partial closes counted twice.

Option 2: a ready-made template

A template saves the formula work, and we publish a free one: see the free MT5 trading journal template and the forex trading journal Excel template. You still paste in the trades yourself every month, so it works best for a trader who makes a handful of trades a week.

Option 3: a report built from your journal

If your trades are already in your AI Trading Journal journal, the app can turn them into an Excel report on demand. Click Export Report in the left sidebar, choose the account, then pick this month so far, last month, the last 30 days or two dates of your own, and save the file where you want it.

The workbook has four sheets:

Summary: fifteen key figures and six charts. The figures are net P&L, trades, win rate, profit factor, expectancy per trade, average win, average loss, payoff ratio, best and worst trade, best and worst day, winning days, longest losing run and maximum drawdown on closed trades.
Daily: one row per day with the result, the running total and the day's drawdown.
Trades: every closed trade, with your own columns (setup, emotion, plan followed, rating, tags and notes) carried across.
Chart data: the small tables behind the charts, so you can see exactly what each bar is made of.

Every figure on the Summary sheet is a live formula over the Trades sheet. Edit a row, delete a row or add one and the figures and charts follow (press F9 if Excel does not recalculate by itself). The report is built from the trades in your own journal on your PC, and if the journal is missing trades that MT5 has, the app fills the gap from your terminal's history, which it only reads.

The six charts and what each one tells you

Chart	Question it answers	A warning sign
Cumulative P&L	Is the account drifting up, flat or down, and how bumpy is the ride?	One sharp jump carries the whole month
Daily P&L	How are wins and losses spread across days?	A few large red bars after many small green ones
Net by weekday	Do some days of the week cost you money?	A day that is negative month after month
Net by close hour	Which hours of the session work for you?	Late-session losses when you are tired
Net by symbol	Where does your edge actually live?	A favourite pair that loses
Winning vs losing trades	What is the win/loss mix?	A high win rate paired with a weak profit factor

One chart tells you little. The value is in comparing them: a weekday that loses, at an hour that loses, on a symbol that loses, is a rule waiting to be written. Our weekly review checklist and trading performance analysis guide show how to turn a pattern into one change.

Traps that make an Excel trading report wrong

Server time. MT5 times are the broker's server clock, not your local time. A trade closed at 23:50 server time may belong to the next day on your wall clock, which moves results between days and hours. Decide which clock you use and stay consistent.
Costs. Commission and swap are separate columns. Report net, not gross profit.
Balance rows. Deposits, withdrawals and credits are not trades. Leaving them in destroys win rate and profit factor.
Partial closes. Closing a position in two steps can produce two rows. Decide whether you count positions or deals and apply it to every month.
Drawdown. A drawdown computed from closed-trade results is not the drawdown of your account balance, because it ignores open trades. Label it that way when you share it.

Whatever route you choose, treat the result as your own record. A self-made spreadsheet is not audited or independently verified, and it is not trading or investment advice. See how to build a track record if you need numbers someone else can check.

Frequently asked questions

How do I export MT5 trade history to Excel?

Open the History tab in the Toolbox, set the period, right-click the list, choose Report, then the Excel (Open XML) option. The terminal saves the file and opens it.

Does MT5 make charts in its Excel report?

No. The built-in report is a statement with summary figures, not a chart pack. You add charts yourself, use a template, or generate a report from another tool.

What is the fastest way to get charts from MT5 trades?

If your trades are already in your AI Trading Journal journal, Export Report builds a workbook with a Summary sheet, six charts and a calendar tab for every month in a few clicks.

Does the report change my account or my trades?

No. The app only reads trade history. It never places, modifies or closes a trade.

Why do my Excel numbers differ from MT5?

The usual causes are balance rows left in the list, partial closes counted twice, a different time zone, or comparing gross profit with net after costs.

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