Wrike Data Export: The Complete One Is Not For You
Wrike has three export routes. The one available on every plan removes descriptions, attachments and comments. The complete one is Business-and-above, and cannot be imported back.
Exit score: 18 / 30
How hard Wrike 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 | 4/5 | All three routes run from inside the product. One point deducted because the article defers the question of which access roles may export to a separate page rather than answering it. |
| Format openness | 3/5 | Excel is open and readable. The Account Backup format is not specified in the export documentation, which matters because it is the only route carrying the full record. |
| Completeness | 2/5 | Depends entirely on the route. Excel export - the only one on all plans - "excludes descriptions, attachments, and comments". Those three are where the substance of project work usually lives. |
| Not paywalled | 1/5 | The worst score on this criterion anywhere on the site. Account Backup is "Business, Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle and Apex" only; BI Export is "Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle and Apex" only. Free and Team plans get the stripped Excel export and nothing else. |
| Documentation clarity | 5/5 | Genuinely excellent. Wrike publishes a comparison of what each route carries - descriptions, attachments, comments, dependencies, timelogs - and states plainly that Account Backup cannot be reimported. |
| Caps and expiry | 3/5 | No row limits, expiry windows or download caps are documented for any route. Scored as unknown rather than absent, since the article does not confirm their absence either. |
What comes out
- Items with assignees, task and project status, dependencies and timelogs - carried by all three export routes.
- Descriptions and comments, but only via Account Backup or BI Export.
- Attachments in full via Account Backup; as metadata only via BI Export.
- Excel and BI Export files can be imported back into Wrike, which is useful for restructuring rather than leaving.
What stays behind
- Descriptions, attachments and comments - if Excel export is the only route your plan allows.
- The ability to reimport: "Account Backup cannot be reimported", so the most complete export is a read-only archive.
- Attachment files on BI Export, which carries metadata about them rather than the files themselves.
- Everything above Excel, on Free and Team plans.
This is one of the two lowest scores on the site, and it is worth being precise about why, because Wrike does several things well. Its export documentation is among the best we have read — it publishes a clear comparison of what each route carries, and it volunteers an awkward fact about its own product that most vendors would leave you to discover.
The problem is not what Wrike tells you. It is what the tiers allow.
Three routes, and yours is probably the thin one
| Route | Plans | Carries |
|---|---|---|
| Export to Excel | All plans | Assignees, status, dependencies, timelogs. No descriptions, attachments or comments. |
| Account Backup | Business, Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle, Apex | Everything, including attachments in full. Cannot be reimported. |
| BI Export | Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle, Apex | Descriptions and comments; attachment metadata only. |
Read the first row again. The export available to everyone excludes descriptions, attachments and comments.
Consider what remains. You get a spreadsheet of task names, who they were assigned to, what status they reached, what depended on what, and how many hours went in. That is the skeleton of the work.
What you do not get is the brief inside the description, the file the client sent, or the conversation where the decision was made. That is the work itself.
The paywall sits on the exit
Wrike scores 1 out of 5 on the paywall criterion — the only product on this site to score that low on it — and the reasoning is straightforward.
Most products that gate an export gate a format. Trello puts CSV behind Premium but gives everyone JSON, which is complete. That is an inconvenience.
Wrike gates completeness. The Free and Team plans do not have a slower or less convenient route to the same data; they have no route to descriptions, attachments and comments at all. Leaving with your content requires a Business subscription first.
Wrike's Team plan is documented for 2 to 15 users, so this affects small teams specifically — exactly the buyers least able to add a tier in order to walk away.
The complete export you cannot restore
Then there is the asymmetry Wrike is admirably honest about: only Excel and BI Export data can be imported back. Account Backup cannot be reimported.
So the file that contains everything is the file that can only ever be read, and the files you can restore from are the ones missing your content.
This is not necessarily bad design — a full backup and a working import format solve different problems, and plenty of systems separate them. But it changes what an Account Backup is for. It is an archive: something to keep in case you need to look something up in three years, not something to migrate from.
If you are moving to another tool, your practical migration file is the Excel export — the stripped one. That is the sentence that determines Wrike's score.
What Wrike gets right
Full marks on documentation, and genuinely earned.
Wrike publishes a comparison showing which routes carry descriptions, attachments, comments, dependencies and timelogs. It distinguishes attachments-in-full from attachments-as-metadata. It states which plans each route needs. And it tells you the Account Backup cannot be reimported rather than letting you find out.
Compare that with Asana, which names formats and plans and then says nothing whatsoever about contents. Wrike's export is more restricted and far better described, and if you have to choose which of those two problems to have, description is the one you can plan around.
Working with an 18
A low score is not an instruction to avoid the product. Wrike is capable software and it is covered elsewhere on this site for good reasons. It is an instruction to be deliberate.
If you are on Business or above: run an Account Backup now, as your archive, and run an Excel export as your portable copy. Keep both. Neither is sufficient alone.
If you are on Free or Team: understand that your descriptions, attachments and comments are not currently portable. Either keep the material that matters somewhere else from the start, or accept that leaving means retyping it. Both are legitimate choices; discovering it during a migration is not.
Either way: confirm your access role can export before the week you need it. Wrike's article does not resolve which roles may run each route.
The verdict
18 out of 30. Well documented, tightly restricted, and structured so that completeness is a paid feature.
Most of the deduction is one criterion. Wrike scores 5 for documentation and 1 for paywalling — a vendor being fully honest about a policy that is not in the customer's favour. That is better than dishonesty and it is still the policy.
For the same pattern in a different shape, see Teamwork.com, whose full export is complete in content and nearly unusable in format. For where Wrike sits as a purchase, see project management software for agencies.
Before you cancel
- Establish which of the three routes your plan actually allows before you plan anything else.
- If you are on Free or Team, accept that descriptions, attachments and comments will not come out through the supported export - and copy the important ones by hand.
- If you are on Business or above, run the Account Backup and keep it as your archive of record.
- Do not treat Account Backup as a migration file. It cannot be reimported, into Wrike or realistically anywhere else.
- Run an Excel export as well, even on Business - it is the readable one and the only one you can move into another tool.
- Download attachments separately if you are relying on BI Export, which carries only their metadata.
- Check your access role permits export before your last week, not during it.
What we could not verify
- What file format Account Backup is delivered in.
- Which access roles are permitted to run each export route.
- Whether any row or item limits apply to Excel export.
- How long an Account Backup download remains available after it is generated.
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 data from Wrike?
Three routes, with different reach. Export to Excel is available on all plans. Account Backup requires Business, Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle or Apex. BI Export requires Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle or Apex. Which one you can use decides how much of your work actually leaves.
Does a Wrike Excel export include comments and attachments?
No. Wrike states that Excel export excludes descriptions, attachments and comments. It carries assignees, status, dependencies and timelogs. Since Excel is the only route available on every plan, most Wrike users cannot export the descriptive content of their own projects.
What is Wrike Account Backup and who can use it?
The most complete export Wrike offers - it carries descriptions, comments and attachments in full. It is limited to Business, Legacy Enterprise, Pinnacle and Apex plans, and Wrike states it cannot be reimported, so it functions as an archive rather than a migration file.
Can you import a Wrike backup back into Wrike?
Not the Account Backup. Wrike documents that only Excel and BI Export data can be imported back. So the export that contains everything is the one you can never restore from, which is an unusual and important asymmetry to understand before you rely on it.
Is Wrike export available on the free plan?
Only Export to Excel, which excludes descriptions, attachments and comments. Neither Account Backup nor BI Export is available below Business. If you are evaluating Wrike's free tier, that is worth weighing - it is the tightest plan restriction on any export we have scored.
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.