What is NOT exported (targets, category notes, photos)

YNAB’s own help page says it in one line: the export “does not include targets or category notes”. Photos are not in it either — YNAB lets you download them one at a time, never in bulk. If any of these matter to you, save them before you close the account. Afterwards there is nothing left to export them from.

Targets. Go through your plan one category at a time and write down what each target asks for: the amount, and the date or rhythm it works to. The plan file from the export is a good place for it — open it in a spreadsheet, add a Target column, and fill it in by hand. It takes one sitting, and it is the only record of those decisions you will keep.

Category notes. Same spreadsheet, one more column. Copy each note across while you are going through the categories anyway.

Photos. In the account register, click the photo on a transaction and choose Download Image. There is no faster way.

Scheduled transactions. YNAB’s help pages do not say whether they come out with the rest, and we could not confirm it either way. Note each one before you leave — payee, amount, how often and the next date — so you can set it up again wherever you go.

Reports. Reflection data — Spending Breakdown, Spending Trends, Income v Expense and Net Worth — has its own export in YNAB and is not part of this one.

What is in the two files

One file is your plan: a row for every category in every month. The other is your register: a row for every transaction. The first column tells them apart — Month in the plan, Account in the register.

The headings below come from a real YNAB export made in August 2026. YNAB’s help page does not list them, and they have changed before — older exports called the plan’s Assigned column Budgeted — so if your file disagrees with this table, your file is right.

The plan file

Column	What is in it
`Month`	The month, written like `Aug 2026`
`Category Group/Category`	The group and the category, joined with a slash
`Category Group`	The group on its own
`Category`	The category on its own
`Assigned`	What you assigned to the category that month
`Activity`	What moved through it that month; spending shows as negative
`Available`	What was available in it for that month

The register file

Column	What is in it
`Account`	The account the transaction belongs to
`Flag`	The flag colour, if you set one; otherwise empty
`Date`	The date — month first in the export we checked: `09/14/2026`
`Payee`	Who was paid, or who paid you
`Category Group/Category`	The group and the category, joined with a slash
`Category Group`	The group on its own
`Category`	The category on its own
`Memo`	Your memo, if you wrote one
`Outflow`	Money out, as a positive amount
`Inflow`	Money in, as a positive amount
`Cleared`	The transaction’s cleared status

Two things about the register catch people out.

Money in and money out are separate columns. A spend has its amount in Outflow and zero in Inflow. For one signed figure per row, calculate Inflow − Outflow.

Every transfer appears twice, once from each account, with a payee that reads Transfer : followed by the other account’s name. Totals across all your accounts come out right, because the two halves cancel. Totals of spending do not, unless you leave those rows out.

Exporting only some transactions

For tax season, or for one account, YNAB can export a selection instead:

Open an account, or All Accounts, from the left sidebar.
Tick the checkbox beside each transaction you want — or search and filter first, then tick the checkbox in the table header to select everything showing.
Click More in the action bar that appears, then Export # Transactions.

That file’s name starts with “Selected Transactions for” and your plan’s name.

Opening the files in Excel or Google Sheets

Import them rather than double-clicking. A double-click lets the spreadsheet guess the separator and the dates, and it can guess wrong. Use File → Import in Google Sheets, or the text/CSV import on Excel’s Data tab, so you get to choose.

If everything lands in one column, the file is tab-separated. YNAB writes TSV for currencies that use a comma for decimals. Choose Tab as the separator.

Check which way round the dates are. In the export we checked they were month first. A spreadsheet set to a region that writes the day first will read 03/04/2026 as the 3rd of April instead of the 4th of March — silently, for every date where both numbers are 12 or under. Look for a date with a number above 12 to be sure, then set the import to match or keep the column as text.

Amounts carry the currency sign. In the dollar export we checked, each one had its dollar sign attached, with no thousands separator, and a negative put the minus in front of the sign. A spreadsheet set to another currency may take them for text: find the sign, replace it with nothing, and format the column as numbers.

Use Category Group and Category, not the joined column. A category name can contain a slash of its own, so splitting Category Group/Category on the slash can cut in the wrong place.

If you read them with a script, expect a byte-order mark in front of the first heading, so the first column may not match Account or Month exactly.

Keep a copy somewhere that is not a budgeting app. Two plain text files will still open in thirty years, which is more than anyone can promise about an account on a service.

Importing the export into another budget app

Any importer is somebody’s reading of this format, ours included. The question to ask a new app is not “can it import YNAB” — everything says yes — but “will it show me what it made of my numbers before it saves them?”

Fundkeep reads both files, rebuilds your categories, accounts and history, and shows you every difference between its balances and YNAB’s before anything is saved — more on that for people leaving YNAB.