At the beginning of a new year, I like to get a full order history of my Amazon purchases. This can be especially helpful if you have any purchases that qualify as small business expenses for tax purposes.
It used to be you could immediately get a transaction report of your Amazon purchases and open that report in Excel. But a few years ago, Amazon changed the process such that you now have to request that data and wait for an email from Amazon which then has a link to your order history. This brief article will walk you through the process of getting your order history along with tips on how to reformat the file in Excel for better analysis.
How to Download your Amazon Order History into Microsoft Excel
You cannot do this from the Amazon mobile app! You have to visit the Amazon website. The following screenshots are from a desktop computer.
Start by logging into the Amazon website and then visit the page called Your Account.
Scroll down the page until you see the box above labeled, Manage your data (see above screenshot). Click on the link for Request your data, and then choose Your Orders (sample screenshot below).
After submitting, you’ll see a confirmation like the one below. While they indicate that it could take a long time, I have usually received my order history within an hour or two.
You’ll receive an email from Amazon with a link to click, and when you do, you’ll arrive at a screen similar to this one. Click the download button when you arrive at the page.
When you open the ZIP file, there will be a lot of different folders. But the folder that I find to be the most useful is called Retail.OrderHistory.1 (screenshot below).
When you open the CSV file in the OrderHistory folder, Excel will prompt you to potentially convert (remove leading zeros). I always choose Don’t Convert, as otherwise, any postal codes (zipcodes) can be messed up.
In the YouTube video that follows, I’ll show how I like to reformat the spreadsheet and add a pivot table for annual summaries.