How to Export Zendesk Tickets with Comments and History

How to export Zendesk tickets: JSON, CSV, XML or the API

Zendesk can export tickets, users and organizations to JSON, CSV or XML files, but the formats are not equal. Only JSON and XML keep the comments, and on some plans there is no export tool at all: "The exporting tools described in this article are not available on Team plans. However, customers on all Zendesk plans can use the Zendesk REST API to export data." (Zendesk)

This guide is for support leads, Zendesk admins and owners who want a full copy of their ticket history: for a backup, a migration, before cancelling, or to learn what it is worth. For that last question, get a free estimate from company-level answers first; no export is needed.

Source: Zendesk help: Exporting ticket, user, or organization data from your account

Export Zendesk tickets step by step

Zendesk turns exports off by default: "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." (Zendesk) Ask early, because nothing else can start until they are on.

• Have the account owner contact Zendesk Customer Support to enable data exports, giving the Zendesk Support subdomain.
• In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Tools, then Reports, and open the Export tab if there is one. If the option is missing, exports may be restricted to certain admins.
• Choose Full JSON export, set the date range from the first ticket to today, select tickets and click Export. Repeat for users and organizations so requester and company IDs can be resolved.
• Wait for the email. An export can take from a few minutes to a day or more, and the download link is valid for at least three days.
• Download the zip and check the file count: larger exports arrive as several numbered files, and their order is not guaranteed.
• Note that AI agent tickets cannot be exported, and that items updated within 6 minutes of the request are left out.

Source: Zendesk help: Exporting ticket, user, or organization data from your account

What Zendesk exports include and leave out

The CSV export is the most common mistake. It "does not include deleted tickets, ticket comments, or ticket descriptions", and multi-line text, multi-select and custom date fields are excluded from CSV reports but can be included in JSON and XML reports (Zendesk). CSV dates are converted to the account's default time zone, while JSON uses UTC, so the two will not match.

JSON has its own limit: if a single ticket has more than 1 MB of data, its comments are left out of the main file and the zip includes a second file listing those tickets with an error. Zendesk exports JSON as NDJSON, one object per line, which suits large archives (Zendesk).

Attachments are not inside the export files. Each comment carries an attachments array with links to the files (Zendesk Developer Docs), so download the files you want to keep with a script while the account is live.

Source: Zendesk help: Exporting ticket, user, or organization data from your account

Export full ticket history with the incremental API and audits

For history, use the API. "Audits are a read-only history of all updates to a ticket": each audit is one update, such as a changed field, a new comment or added tags (Zendesk Developer Docs). That is the record of who changed priority, when a ticket was escalated and how long each step took.

The Incremental Exports API returns everything that changed since a start time, and the ticket events endpoint "Returns a stream of changes that occurred on tickets". Comments are only included in the event stream if you use the comment_events sideload. The endpoints allow up to 10 requests per minute (Zendesk Developer Docs), so a large account takes hours to export in full; start from time zero and let it run.

• Keep ticket, requester, assignee, group and organization IDs on every row.
• Keep created, updated and solved timestamps, satisfaction ratings and tags.
• Keep public and private comments apart; private notes often explain the resolution.
• Export help center articles too if agents linked them in replies.

Source: Zendesk Developer Docs: Incremental Exports API

Retention traps: archiving, deletion schedules and cancelling

Archiving is not deletion. "In most cases, Zendesk automatically archives tickets 120 days after the ticket status changes to Closed or the ticket is in the Closed state" (Zendesk). Archived tickets are excluded from views, but they are still accessible, searchable and available through incremental export, so a full export still reaches them.

Deletion is permanent faster than most teams expect. Deleted tickets stay in a Deleted tickets view for 30 days and are then permanently deleted, and an archived ticket that is deleted skips that view altogether (Zendesk). Admins can also set deletion schedules that delete archived tickets after a set period, continuously (Zendesk). Check for schedules before you plan an export.

Cancelling starts a clock. Ninety days after an account is canceled or terminated, an automated process begins that permanently deletes its service data, and "Once commenced, this process cannot be reversed" (Zendesk Service Data Deletion Policy). The checklist for exporting before closing covers the other systems a closing company uses.

Source: Zendesk help: Zendesk Service Data Deletion Policy

Why years of ticket history matter to AI developers

Support tickets are one of the clearest records of how a company solves problems: a customer describes an issue in their own words, agents ask questions, try fixes, escalate and resolve, and the ticket records the outcome and how long it took. AI developers building support agents need many such threads with the resolution attached. In Origin's experience as an independent data partner, the comments, private notes and audit trail are what make a ticket archive valuable; a CSV of ticket fields is not.

In Zendesk the outcome signal is the solved status, the time from creation to solve, the satisfaction rating and its comment, and the audit trail of reassignments, priority changes and escalations; private notes often record the actual fix. A full JSON or API export keeps all of these, while a CSV keeps almost none. Sales of workplace archives are now frequent enough to support specialist platforms: MIT Technology Review reported that one wind-down platform had handled over 150 deals and expected to return over $10 million to startups by the end of 2026.

See licensing support tickets for AI, what company data is worth, workflow data for AI agents and how to keep company data sellable.

Source: MIT Technology Review: AI labs are buying data from dead startups (Oct 2026)

Personal data, customer contracts and who owns Zendesk data

Zendesk's customer agreement says "As between the parties, Customer retains ownership of all Service Data," and its Data Processing Agreement applies to the extent Service Data includes any personal data (Zendesk). Tickets almost always do: names, emails, phone numbers, order numbers, addresses and sometimes payment or health details typed into a comment.

In Zendesk, personal data sits in requester and user profiles, in comment bodies where customers type order numbers, addresses and sometimes card or health details, in attachments such as screenshots and photos, and in satisfaction comments. Under California law, deidentified information is information that "cannot reasonably be used to infer information about, or otherwise be linked to, a particular consumer" (Cal. Civ. Code 1798.140), so tokenizing the requester is not enough when the comment text still names them.

• Replace requester names and emails with stable tokens, so one customer's tickets still link without naming them.
• Scan comments and attachments for card numbers, account numbers, IDs and health details, and remove them.
• Check business customers' contracts for confidentiality terms that cover support conversations.
• See the de-identification guide and GDPR and CCPA for data licensing.

Source: Zendesk Customer Agreement

Next step

Ask Zendesk to enable exports today, run a full JSON export of tickets, users and organizations, and plan an API export of audits and attachments if the history matters. Then note the years covered, the ticket volume and the products or services they concern, and get an estimate from that description. Teams that track engineering work in Jira can follow the Jira and Confluence export guide.

This page maps the vendor documentation and public rules as of November 2026. Plans and menus change, so confirm each step in your own admin console, and take contract and privacy questions to your lawyer.

Not sure whether a buyer or an offer is sound? Origin checks who the buyer is, what the license allows and how the price compares with published deals before anything is signed. Get a free estimate and a second opinion.