You can export a single company or all companies in a database, and you can export other types of data such as global data, application data and application objects.

When you export data from a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database, the data is stored in a file with the extension .navdata, which is a new file format that is proprietary to Microsoft Dynamics NAV data. You cannot edit the .navdata files in other tools.

The data that you export is not deleted from the original database. So that means that you can use the functionality to essentially take a copy of your customer’s live data, leave them to continue working, while you import the data into an offline database back at your office for further debugging or other investigation. You can also use the .navdata files to move data to a new database, such as moving a company to a new database when you want to deprecate a database, for example.

When you export data from the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client or the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client, data is exported from the database that your current company uses. Similarly, when you import data, data is imported into your current database.

Important: To export or import data from a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database, you must be a user in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV database, and your user account must have a permission set that enables you to export or import data, such as the SUPER permission set. We recommend that you define a specific permission set such as DATA-EXPORTIMPORT and add System permissions 5410, Export Data to Data File, and 5420, Import Data from Data File. Optionally, add other permissions, and then assign the permission sets to the users that you want to be able to export and import data.

To export data

  1. Enter data file in the Search box.

  2. Select Export to a Data File. The Export Data window opens.

  3. (Optional) Enter a description of the data to export.

  4. Select the data you want to export.

    • All Companies: Select this check box if you want to export the data for all of the listed companies. This includes the company-specific business data but no other data. When this check box is selected, all of the companies are selected. If you clear the check box of a company, this check box is automatically cleared.

    • Global Data: Select this check box to export data this is common to all companies in the database. This includes the report list, user IDs and printer selections, but no company-specific business data.

    • Application Data: Select this check box to export data that defines the application in the database. This includes permissions, permission sets, profiles and style sheets.

    • Application: Select this check box to export all application objects. Data is not included. This is similar to exporting all objects to an .fob file.

    Note: If you need to do offline debugging, select all of the check boxes to export the application and data.

  5. If the All Companies check box was not selected, select the check box(es) of the companies that you want to export.

  6. Click OK.

  7. In the Exporting Data to a File window, specify the name and location of the file that will be created (for example, c:\CompanyExport.navdata).

  8. Click Save. The operation may take several minutes to complete.

See Also


Information for this procedure is from the following source:
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