Manual method
- Use LinkedIn in a desktop browser. Under Me, open Settings & Privacy and Data Privacy.
- Choose Download your data and select individual categories or the larger archive.
- Request it and use the email link once ready.
- Unzip the package. Keep the original CSV files, and save important linked documents separately if you have access.
What you get: Only categories applicable to the account are supplied. Other members can withhold email addresses from connection exports. Rich-media records may be URLs rather than document bytes; preserve your original attachments separately. Provider instructions.
Size and waiting time
Planning example: 0.1 GB; light/heavy scenarios: 0.005–1 GB. These are estimates, not a measured population average or fixed limits. A career history, thousands of connections and messages are mostly tabular text; separately saved documents can add several GB.
Preparation: LinkedIn says narrow requests arrive within minutes, larger archives within 24 hours, and ready files remain available for 72 hours.
Network transfer of 0.1 GB: about 2 min at 10 Mbps, 23 sec at 50 Mbps, or 11 sec at 100 Mbps. This assumes 70% sustained throughput and excludes preparation, manual work and extraction. These are download estimates; online backup takes additional time at your upload speed. Transfer calculations and large-file examples.
Store and check your archive
An encrypted folder on your computer is suitable for this small report; keep a second copy on an external drive. Allow roughly 0.3 GB of working space for the example, including an original, an extracted working copy and room to check it. Very compressed packages can need more. A USB key is useful for a spare copy, but should not be the only one. An encrypted online copy protects against losing the local devices.
Keep the original in linkedin/YYYY-MM-DD/original/. Record the account alias, selected scope, date range and missing items. Open old and recent records and sample attachments offline, then compare file sizes or checksums after copying. Keep the source account until you have checked the result. Storage and recovery instructions.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.