How to Export Hargreaves Lansdown Data to CSV and Excel
A step-by-step guide to downloading your Hargreaves Lansdown transaction history as a CSV or Excel file, what the export contains, the two quirks that catch people out, and what to do with the file once you have it.
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Hargreaves Lansdown holds your investments; it does not hand you much to analyse them with. If you want your HL holdings in a spreadsheet, a tax record, or a portfolio tracker, the way in is the transaction history export. It is quick once you know where it lives, and it is more useful than the account page suggests. This guide walks through the Hargreaves Lansdown CSV export step by step, explains what is in the file, and covers the two things that make HL data slightly awkward to work with.
What You Can and Cannot Export from HL
HL has no public API, no live data feed and no "connect your account" option for third-party tools. What it does offer is a full transaction history per account, downloadable as a file, plus the usual PDF statements and tax certificates. For tracking purposes, the transaction history is the one you want: it is the only export that contains every purchase, sale, dividend and fee with dates and prices, and that is what a tracker needs to rebuild your portfolio.
Because each account is exported separately, an investor with an ISA, a SIPP and a Fund & Share Account ends up with three files. That is normal. Keep them, name them by account, and they combine cleanly later.
How to Export Hargreaves Lansdown Transactions Step by Step
- Log in at hl.co.uk on a computer. The export is easier on the website than in the app.
- Open the account you want: Stocks & Shares ISA, SIPP or Fund & Share Account.
- Go to Transaction history within that account.
- Set the date range. Choose the widest range available so the file covers every purchase you have ever made in the account. A file that starts in the current tax year cannot tell you your real return.
- Download. Use the Download / Export option and choose CSV. If your account page shows only a table with no download, select the whole table, copy it into Excel and save the workbook as .xlsx or .csv. Either format is fine for the steps below.
Repeat for each account. The whole process is under five minutes for three accounts.
Already have the file?
Import it into Openbook as it downloaded
No reformatting. Openbook reads the columns, converts pence to pounds, matches each holding by name and shows you the result to confirm before it saves a thing.
What Is in the Hargreaves Lansdown Export
Each row in the file is one event in the account. Across a typical export you will see:
- Buys and sells: date, the holding's full name, number of shares or units, price, and the total amount including dealing charges.
- Dividends and fund distributions: the payer, the date paid and the cash amount.
- Fees: platform charges and any dealing charges shown separately.
- Cash movements: deposits, withdrawals, interest and transfers between accounts.
For a tracker, the buy and sell rows are what rebuild your positions; the dividend rows are what build your income history. Fee and cash rows are useful for a full money-weighted return, and harmless otherwise.
Two Quirks of HL Data to Know About
Prices are in pence
HL quotes UK shares in pence, and the export follows suit. Shell at 2,650p appears as 2650, not 26.50. Fund prices, by contrast, are in pounds. If you paste the file into a spreadsheet and multiply quantity by price for a UK share, you get a number a hundred times too big. Divide UK share prices by 100 before doing anything else, and leave fund prices as they are. Openbook's import handles this automatically for HL files: choose Hargreaves Lansdown in the import and the "LSE prices in pence" option is on, and the preview shows the values in pounds so you can check one against what you paid.
There are no ticker codes
HL identifies holdings by name only. A row says "AstraZeneca plc" rather than AZN, and "Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund" rather than an ISIN. Any tool that wants to price the holding today has to work out which listed security the name refers to. Most of the time that is unambiguous; occasionally, where a company has more than one share class or a fund has income and accumulation versions, it is not. Whatever you use should let you confirm the match rather than guess. Openbook's preview shows the name it read and the stock it matched, with a picker to change it before anything is saved.
Opening the Export in Excel or Google Sheets
The CSV opens directly in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Two tips save time. Format the date column as dates before sorting, or the rows will sort alphabetically. And add a helper column for pounds prices (UK share price divided by 100) so every later formula reads in pounds. From there, a pivot table on holding name with quantity summed (sells entered as negatives) gives you current positions, and a second pivot on dividend rows by month gives you an income history. Our dividend tracker guide goes deeper on the income side.
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What the HL Export Does Not Include
It is worth being clear about the limits of the file, because they shape what you can do with it. The transaction history is a record of events, not a snapshot of holdings: it does not contain a "current value" column, so a tracker or spreadsheet has to rebuild positions from the buys and sells and price them itself. It carries no ticker codes, as covered above, and no ISINs. It does not include the price of a holding on any day other than the day you dealt, so historical performance charts have to come from a separate price source. And it does not distinguish a purchase you made from a purchase HL made on your behalf through automatic dividend reinvestment, other than by the description on the row, so keep an eye on that if you have reinvestment switched on.
None of these are faults. They are the difference between a broker's ledger and a portfolio tracker, and they are precisely the gaps a tracker exists to fill.
Using the Export for Tax Records
For investments held in an ISA or SIPP there is no tax to report, and the export is purely for tracking. For a Fund & Share Account it does double duty. Capital gains tax needs the acquisition cost and date of every lot sold, and the transaction history has exactly that, which makes the CSV the easiest way to reconstruct a gain when HL's own contract notes are scattered across years. Dividends received in the account are taxable above the annual dividend allowance, and the dividend rows in the export, summed by tax year, are the figure you need. HL also issues a consolidated tax certificate each year, which should agree with your own total; if it does not, the export is the quickest way to find out why.
A practical habit: export the Fund & Share Account history once a year, just after the tax year ends, and file it with the tax certificate. Five minutes in April saves an hour in January.
Common Export Problems and Fixes
- The file is empty or short. The date range defaulted to a recent period. Widen it and download again.
- Values are wildly wrong. Almost always pence being read as pounds. Check one UK holding's price against what you know you paid.
- A holding will not match. Search by a distinctive word in the name rather than the whole string, and confirm the share class (ordinary shares, not preference; the accumulation or income version of a fund).
- Two accounts hold the same stock. That is fine and expected. A good tracker adds them together in its portfolio view while keeping the account breakdown available.
What to Do With Your HL Data Next
An export is a means to an end. The questions worth answering with it are whether your whole portfolio, across all three accounts, has beaten a simple tracker; how much of your income depends on your largest two or three payers; and whether the sector mix you have ended up with is the one you intended. Our Hargreaves Lansdown portfolio tracker guide covers how to set that analysis up, and if you also hold accounts with AJ Bell or interactive investor, their exports combine with HL's in the same place.
Next step
Turn the file into a portfolio
Upload the HL export, confirm the holdings it found, and see your combined portfolio with income, concentration and risk in one view.
You can Compare HL, SHEL, AZN side by side on Openbook, or find stocks with the screener.
Co-founder of Openbook Analytics. Andrew studied Finance and Economics at the University of Strathclyde and writes on UK & US equities, stock valuation models, and portfolio strategy.
This article is for information and education only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any investment. Openbook Analytics Ltd is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results; the value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invest. Do your own research or speak to a qualified financial adviser.