Teamwork.com Data Export: Complete, And You Cannot Open It
Teamwork hands you everything, in a format almost nobody can read. The full export is a MySQL database backup: complete, admin-only, once per day, and not reimportable.
Exit score: 20 / 30
How hard Teamwork.com makes it to leave with your data intact, scored against 6 criteria from the vendor's own published documentation. How we score.
| Criterion | Score | What the documentation says |
|---|---|---|
| Self-service | 3/5 | Runs from inside the product with no support ticket, but it is restricted to administrators and throttled to once per day. An ordinary project member cannot take the full export. |
| Format openness | 1/5 | The lowest format score on the site. Teamwork states the file is "not in a format like Excel that you can easily open and edit" and that reading it requires MySQL Server installed locally. Technically an open format; practically a closed door. |
| Completeness | 4/5 | A database backup is by definition thorough - it is the working record rather than a rendered view of it. Deducted one point because the documentation does not enumerate what tables are present, so completeness is inferred rather than stated. |
| Not paywalled | 4/5 | No plan tier is named as a requirement for the full export, which puts Teamwork well ahead of Wrike on this measure. Deducted one point because the admin-only restriction is itself a gate for most users. |
| Documentation clarity | 5/5 | Unusually honest. Teamwork volunteers that the file is hard to open, names the software you need, and states outright that it "cannot be edited and uploaded back to your site". Nothing is oversold. |
| Caps and expiry | 3/5 | Limited to one full export per day. No size ceiling, row limit or download expiry window is documented, so those are scored as unknown rather than confirmed absent. |
What comes out
- A full database backup of the account, delivered as a zip.
- The underlying records of projects, tasks, milestones and time - stored as database tables rather than documents.
- Everything at once, rather than project by project, which is rarer than it should be.
- Individual project and task list exports, documented separately from the full backup.
What stays behind
- Any realistic ability to read the file without installing MySQL Server and restoring the database.
- Reimport: Teamwork states the backup "cannot be edited and uploaded back to your site".
- The full export, for anyone who is not an account administrator.
- A second attempt the same day - the export is limited to once per day.
Teamwork.com and Wrike score two points apart and fail in opposite directions, which makes them the most instructive pair on this site.
Wrike will give almost anyone an export, but the complete one costs a Business subscription. Teamwork will give any administrator the complete one, free of tier restrictions — and then hands it over in a format that most of its customers cannot open.
A database, not a document
The full export is a MySQL database backup. Teamwork does not dress this up:
"The backup file is not in a format like Excel that you can easily open and edit."
To read it you need MySQL Server installed locally, and you need to restore the dump into it. For a software team that is a Tuesday afternoon. For a marketing agency, a construction firm or a legal practice — all of whom run projects in Teamwork — it is a wall.
And it is worth being clear about what has actually happened here. Nothing was withheld. The export is arguably the most complete thing in this entire section: it is the working record itself, not a rendered summary of it. Teamwork gave you everything.
It just gave it to you in the shape it stores it, rather than the shape you need it.
Why that still counts against it
There is a fair objection: a raw database dump is honest, it is a documented open format, and MySQL is free. Is scoring it 1 out of 5 on format openness harsh?
We do not think so, and the reason is the question this whole section asks. Not "did the vendor technically provide the data" but "can you actually get your work back out".
A file you cannot open is not a file you have. If the median Teamwork administrator cannot read the export without hiring someone, the export has not done its job — however open the format is in the abstract. Portability is measured at the receiving end.
The reimport asymmetry, again
Teamwork states that the backup cannot be edited and uploaded back to your site.
This is exactly the pattern Wrike has with Account Backup, and it appears often enough now to be worth naming: the most complete export a vendor offers is frequently the one you can never restore from.
The logic is understandable. A full dump reflects internal schema, IDs and relationships that cannot be safely reinjected into a live account. But the consequence for you is fixed: your archive of record and your migration file are two different things, and no product on this site gives you both in one download.
Plan for two exports, always.
What to actually do
The practical answer is not to abandon the backup. It is to stop expecting it to be the whole plan.
Take the database backup and keep it. Storage is cheap and it is the only complete record. If a dispute or an audit arrives in three years, paying someone for an afternoon to restore it is a real option — but only if the file exists.
Then export the things you need to read. Teamwork documents per-project and per-task-list exports separately, in conventional formats. That is where your live migration material comes from: current projects, open task lists, active time records.
The distinction to hold onto is between archive and working copy. Teamwork gives you a strong archive and a thinner working copy. Wrike gives most customers a thin working copy and no archive at all.
Once per day
The export runs once per day. That deserves the same warning as monday.com's 24-hour cycle: it turns a retry into a wait.
If your download is interrupted, or the file is corrupt, or you realise you needed to include something first, you do not click again. You come back tomorrow. Inside a two-week notice period that is survivable. Inside a two-day one it is not.
The verdict
20 out of 30. Generous in what it gives you, poor in what you can do with it, and completely honest about both.
Teamwork earns full marks for documentation by volunteering the awkward facts — the file is hard to open, you need MySQL, you cannot upload it back. A vendor that tells you the export is inconvenient before you rely on it is behaving considerably better than one that stays silent and lets you find out.
It is still, for most of its customers, an export they will never open.
For the same problem with the opposite cause, see the Wrike exit report — complete export, wrong price. For the delivery-window problem in a third shape, see monday.com.
Before you cancel
- Decide before you export whether anyone on your side can restore a MySQL database. If not, the full backup is an archive you will never open.
- Run project-level and task-list exports as well, in readable formats, for the material you actually need day to day.
- Start the full export early - you get one attempt per day, so a failed or missed download costs you 24 hours.
- Do not plan a migration around the database backup. It is not reimportable and no other tool expects it.
- Export or download attachments separately unless you have confirmed they are inside the backup - the documentation does not say.
- Confirm your account role is administrator well before your final week.
- Keep the backup anyway. Unreadable today is not unreadable forever, and it costs a few gigabytes.
What we could not verify
- Whether file attachments are included in the database backup or stored separately.
- Which database tables are present, and whether comments and activity history are among them.
- Whether the backup download link expires, and after how long.
- What MySQL version the dump targets, which matters for restoring it years later.
These are open questions, not criticisms. Where a vendor does not publish an answer we leave it unscored rather than guessing, and the score is calculated only from what is documented.
Questions people ask
How do you export all your data from Teamwork.com?
An administrator can request a full account backup from inside the product. It arrives as a zip containing a MySQL database backup. Teamwork limits this to one export per day, and individual projects and task lists can be exported separately in more conventional formats.
Can you open a Teamwork.com backup in Excel?
No. Teamwork states plainly that the file is not in a format like Excel that you can easily open and edit, and that you need MySQL Server installed on your machine to read it. If nobody on your team can restore a database, use the per-project exports for anything you actually need to read.
Can you restore a Teamwork.com backup back into Teamwork?
No. Teamwork documents that the backup cannot be edited and uploaded back to your site. It is an archive of record, not a migration file - which is the same structural pattern Wrike has with its Account Backup, and it catches people out for the same reason.
How often can you run a Teamwork.com full export?
Once per day. That sounds generous until you are inside a notice period and a download fails, because the retry is not immediate - it is tomorrow. Start the process with days in hand rather than hours.
Is the Teamwork.com export admin-only?
The full account backup is. Individual project and task list exports are documented separately and are the practical route for a team member leaving with their own work. As with monday.com, personal portability and account portability are different features here.
Where this information comes from
Product details change often. Each item below links to the primary source we checked, so you can confirm anything that matters to your decision.
Vendors change their export tooling without announcing it. If something here no longer matches what you see in the product, tell us and we will re-check it.