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Many traders start with a spreadsheet journal and later move to dedicated software. The move can lose history if not planned.

Steps:

1. Export trade history from your broker or platform.
2. Map spreadsheet columns to the software's fields.
3. Import notes and tags where possible.
4. Keep the original spreadsheet as an archive.

Things that often get lost:

• Custom tags and setup names.
• Screenshots linked to trades.
• Comments on emotions and context.

Benefits of software: automatic import, statistics, filters. Benefits of spreadsheets: flexibility and full control.

Whichever tool you end up with, a fixed set of tags — setup name, session, mistake type — applied consistently matters more than the software itself. Tags are what make statistics meaningful later.

Have you moved journal tools, and what did you lose or gain?

FXS Prop Desk, I moved from a spreadsheet to software last year and the thing that went missing was not on your list: trades that never matched the broker export. Partial closes were the worst, since the software read one ticket split three ways as three separate trades and my win rate jumped by about 8 points overnight.

Before importing everything, I would reconcile one month by hand. Count trades and net result in the spreadsheet, import the same month, and only carry on if both figures match to the cent.

Time zones are the other silent problem. My spreadsheet used London time while the export used server time, so my session tags shifted by two hours until I added a conversion column.

On screenshots, I renamed every file to the ticket number before moving. The import tool could then attach them automatically, which saved a weekend of dragging images around.

I still keep the spreadsheet for anything custom, like my mistake tags. Did you find software that handles a free text tag list well, or did you end up trimming the tags to fit?