Years of support tickets are a record of every customer problem you have solved, and leaving a help desk without them means starting from nothing. Zendesk has several ways to get data out, and they are not the same: some need to be switched on first, some leave out the conversation itself, and one is not on every plan. This guide sets them side by side from Zendesk's own help pages, read on 12 November 2026, so you can choose the right one before you cancel.
First: exports may need switching on
Zendesk's help article on exporting account data opens with this: "To protect the data in your Zendesk account, data exports are not enabled by default in Zendesk accounts. The account owner must contact Zendesk Customer Support to enable data exports in the account." The request should include your Zendesk Support subdomain.
The same article lists the plans the export tools are on: Suite Growth, Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus, and Support Professional and Enterprise. It says the tools "are not available on Team plans", and that "customers on all Zendesk plans can use the Zendesk REST API to export data."
So the first step, weeks before a move rather than days, is to find out which plan you are on, and if your plan has the tools, to ask for exports to be enabled.
The four account exports
Once exports are on, they live in Admin Center under Account > Tools > Reports, on the Export tab. There are four options, and Zendesk sends an email with a download link when the file is ready. The link downloads a zip file and is valid for at least three days. Depending on the date range and how busy the account is, the article says an export can take "anywhere from a few minutes to a day or more."
| Export | What it holds | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Full JSON export | Tickets, users or organizations, chosen with a date range. Comments are included. | The comments of any single ticket over 1 MB of data; anything updated in the 6 minutes before the request |
| CSV export | Ticket data in a spreadsheet, for a date range | Deleted tickets, ticket comments, ticket descriptions, multi-line text and multi-select fields, custom date fields |
| Full XML export | Account settings, groups, organizations, users, and all tickets with their comments | Custom ticket, user and organization fields; not available above 200,000 tickets |
| User XML export | Groups, organizations and users | Custom user and organization fields |
Two points in that table matter more than the rest.
The CSV export does not hold the conversations. It is a list of tickets with their fields: requester, assignee, group, subject, tags, status, priority, the channel the ticket came from, dates, and timing figures such as first reply time and resolution time. It is useful for reporting, and not enough on its own to keep your history, because what the customer wrote and what you answered is in the comments.
For the full conversations, use JSON. The article recommends the JSON export for accounts with more than 200,000 tickets, and accounts with more than one million tickets download in 31-day pieces. The file format is "NDJSON", one JSON object per line, which a developer can read in a stream; the article shows how to wrap the objects in an array if you want one ordinary JSON file.
One more note from the same page: "AI agent tickets cannot be exported."
Step by step: a full export of your tickets
- Ask for exports to be enabled, if your account does not have them yet. The account owner contacts Zendesk Customer Support with the subdomain.
- In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then Tools > Reports, and open the Export tab if needed.
- For your tickets with their conversations, choose the JSON export, set a date range and select tickets, then click Export. Repeat for users and organizations, so you have the people the tickets belong to.
- For a spreadsheet of ticket fields, run the CSV export as well, with the same date range.
- Wait for the email and download each zip file. If no email arrives, the page offers a latest link beside each export that downloads the file you last requested.
- Open the files and check them before you go further: count the tickets, open a few old ones and confirm their comments are there.
The date range in the JSON and CSV exports uses a system timestamp that usually matches the ticket's most recent update, not its creation date. If you choose a narrow range, an old ticket that was updated last week will appear, and an old ticket untouched for years may not. For the whole history, choose a range that covers the life of the account.
Smaller exports: a view to CSV
A ticket view can be exported on every plan, Team plans included. Zendesk's help article on views says: open the view, then click Export CSV, or Actions > Export as CSV, depending on the view. The file arrives by email. The view must be unfiltered, you can export only once every 10 minutes, and large views may fail; the article suggests narrowing the view or using the Views API. This is a quick way to keep a list of open tickets, not a way to move years of history.
The API, for everything else
Every plan can use the Zendesk REST API, and the article points to it for what the exports miss. Custom ticket, user and organization fields come through their own endpoints (List Ticket Fields, List User Fields, List Organization Fields), the List Users endpoint exports every user, and the article lists the Incremental Exports endpoints among its references. Zendesk's developer guide has an article that shows how to write a small script to export all users to a CSV file. If you are on a Team plan, the API is the route for a full copy.
What to keep, and in what form
- The JSON files, unchanged. They are the fullest copy and the one any future tool or developer can read. Keep the original zip files somewhere you control, with a note of the date.
- A CSV for people. Spreadsheets are what you will open in a hurry. The CSV export of ticket fields and a user list cover most questions you will ask later.
- Attachments. The help article on account exports does not say whether file attachments are inside the exports, so if attachments matter to you, ask Zendesk support before you cancel and check a few tickets that had files.
- Your help articles. A knowledge base is separate from tickets, so plan its move on its own.
Before you cancel
- Ask for exports to be enabled, early.
- Export JSON for tickets, users and organizations across the whole life of the account.
- Export CSV for a readable list.
- Check the files: ticket counts, comments on old tickets, custom fields you rely on.
- Pull custom fields and anything missing through the API, or have someone do it.
- Only then change plan or cancel.
What to look for in the next tool
Moving a help desk is a chance to make the next move easier. Look for a tool that stores tickets in a database you can reach, exports whole conversations rather than ticket fields only, and has a documented import so the files above do not sit unused. Software you run on your own server gives you that by default: the data is a database on your machine, and a backup is a copy you hold.
Sources
- Zendesk help, Exporting ticket, user, or organization data from your account, read 12 November 2026.
- Zendesk help, Exporting a view of tickets to a CSV file, read 12 November 2026.
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