How to Export Your Etsy Listings (and What the CSV Won't Give You)

By Terradine · Updated July 27, 2026 · 6 min read

Every Etsy seller should have a current export of their shop sitting somewhere safe. It takes under a minute, it's free, and it's the difference between "my catalog is portable" and "my catalog exists only inside a platform that can lock me out." Here's exactly how to do it, exactly what you get, and — just as important — what the export quietly leaves out.

The export, step by step

1. Sign in to Etsy and open Shop Manager.
2. Click Settings, then Options.
3. Open the Download Data tab.
4. Under Currently for Sale Listings, click Download CSV.

That's it — Etsy generates a file (typically named EtsyListingsDownload.csv) and your browser downloads it. This is the official route, documented in Etsy's Help Center. The same Download Data page also offers your orders (more on those below), your shop settings, and your reviews.

What's actually in the CSV

Open it in any spreadsheet app and you'll find one row per active listing, with these columns (full breakdown at Shop Uploader's guide):

• TITLE and DESCRIPTION — your full listing copy
• PRICE and CURRENCY_CODE
• QUANTITY
• TAGS and MATERIALS — your hard-won SEO keywords, comma-separated
• IMAGE1 through IMAGE10 — URLs pointing to your listing photos on Etsy's servers
• Variation columns — type, name, and values for up to two variations (size, color, etc.)
• SKU

For a text-and-structure snapshot of your shop, that's genuinely most of what matters. Titles, descriptions, and tags are usually years of accumulated work — and they're all here.

What the CSV won't give you

Now the fine print, because assuming this file is a complete backup is how sellers get burned:

• Only active listings. It's called "Currently for Sale" for a reason — draft listings aren't included, and neither are expired or deactivated ones. If you keep seasonal listings deactivated in the off-season, reactivate them before exporting or they won't be in the file.
• Images are links, not files. The IMAGE columns are URLs to Etsy's copies of your photos. If your account is closed and the images are ever removed from Etsy's servers, those links are all you had. Download the actual files (next section).
• No reviews. Reviews are a separate "Download Your Reviews" export (JSON format) on the same page — and either way, reviews are reputation, not data you can carry to another platform.
• No orders or customer history. Orders live in their own CSVs on the Download Data page, downloadable in windows of up to one year at a time. If you want your sales history, pull each year separately.
• Limited variation depth. Two variation types is what the format carries. Shops with complex option matrices or per-variation pricing should double-check what survived the export.
• No digital files or videos. If you sell digital downloads, the deliverable files themselves are not in any export. Keep your masters in your own storage — always.

Getting your images back at full size

The image URLs in the CSV point to Etsy's image CDN. Two practical routes:

Best: don't depend on Etsy for your own photos. The files you originally uploaded should live in your own folders, organized per product. If they do, the IMAGE columns are irrelevant.

Recovery route: if Etsy's copies are all you have, open the URLs from the CSV. If a URL contains a size token like il_570xN, the community-documented trick is to swap it for il_fullxfull to get the largest version Etsy serves. It's the same approach Etsy's own listing-image API used to expose sizes. Save each full-size image into your product folders and you've rebuilt your photo archive.

Opening the file without mangling it

One practical warning before you double-click. Etsy's CSV is UTF-8, and older versions of Excel are notorious for garbling special characters (accents, curly quotes, symbols in your descriptions) when they open UTF-8 CSVs directly — and for silently stripping leading zeros from SKUs it decides are numbers. If your listings use plain English text, you'll probably never notice. If they don't, the safe routes are: Google Sheets (File → Import handles UTF-8 correctly), or Excel's Data → From Text/CSV importer with UTF-8 selected, rather than a bare double-click.

And however you open it — don't save over the original. Keep the raw download untouched as your archival copy, and do any editing in a duplicate. A CSV that's been round-tripped through a spreadsheet app with the wrong settings can end up with mangled characters that then get imported into your next platform.

How often should you export?

Monthly is the honest baseline for an active shop — put a recurring reminder next to whatever you use for bookkeeping. Add an extra export after any big batch of new listings or rewrites. The export reflects your shop at the moment you click the button; a stale file means re-doing whatever you've written since. Sellers who've been through a suspension (here's what that looks like and how to appeal) will tell you the CSV they grabbed "just in case" was the single most valuable file they owned.

Two small habits make the archive actually useful later. Date the filenames — etsy-listings-2026-07.csv beats twelve files all named EtsyListingsDownload.csv. And keep at least the last few months rather than overwriting: if you ever discover a bulk-editing mistake wiped out your carefully tuned tags three weeks ago, last month's export is the only place your old tags still exist.

What to actually do with the file

A CSV sitting in your Downloads folder is a backup. A CSV loaded into a second sales channel is a plan — this is step 4 of the full Etsy backup plan. Because the export is a standard format, marketplaces and tools can read it directly:

• Migration tools — Shopify and others document Etsy-CSV migration paths for moving a catalog wholesale.
• Inventory tools — bookkeeping and inventory apps import the listings CSV to seed product records.
• Backup marketplaces — Terradine reads Etsy CSVs directly: upload the file and your listings — titles, descriptions, prices, images — come across without retyping anything. The same importer accepts eBay, Shopify, and Gumroad exports.

Whichever route you choose, the underlying principle is the same one running through this whole series: your catalog is your asset. The export button is Etsy handing you a copy of it. Take the copy, keep it current, and keep it somewhere a platform decision can't touch — including inside a second channel, where it isn't just stored but quietly earning. If a payment reserve or suspension ever freezes your Etsy income (reserves explained here), the thirty seconds a month you spent on exports becomes the best time investment you've ever made.

Related reading: Your Etsy Backup Plan · The Suspension Appeal Checklist · Payment Reserves, Explained