Export Your Baby's Records: Checkups, Archives and Switching Apps
Every feeding, nap and diaper change becomes part of your baby's record. Weeks later you may want to bring it to a checkup, keep it as a family archive, or take it along when you switch apps. MilkBaby Calendar exports your records as an Excel (.xlsx) file, free for any signed-in user and easy to convert to CSV, so the data stays yours. This guide covers what the export contains, how each of the three uses works, and why a spreadsheet file holds up over the long term.
Why parents export records
A baby’s first months produce a lot of data: feeding times and amounts, sleep windows, diaper changes, growth measurements. Parents export it for three reasons: to bring to a checkup, to keep a family archive, and to take the history along when switching apps. Each one gets its own section below.
How to export, and what you get
In MilkBaby Calendar, export starts from the baby profile page. You pick the profile (only profiles you created yourself can be exported) and the date range.
- Quick presets: the last 7, 30 or 90 days
- Custom range: a custom start and end date, with each export covering at most 90 days
- Output: an Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheet with that baby’s records for that period
The file holds every care record you logged in that window, laid out as a table any spreadsheet app can open. The exact fields depend on what you recorded and the options available at export time. Export is free for any signed-in user; on some platforms, free accounts may be asked to watch a short ad before the export runs, and Premium skips it. Once generated, the file goes through the system share sheet: save it to Files, email it to yourself, upload it to a cloud drive, or print it. One caution: the file contains health data, so saving to Files or an encrypted drive is safer than sending it as a plain email attachment.
Using the export at a checkup
Growth checkups are the most common use. The doctor wants numbers, not memory: average milk intake, total sleep, weight and height trends. A printed spreadsheet, or a file opened on a tablet, turns months of scattered one-tap entries into one readable summary.
If you use the app’s growth charts, bring those too. Two switchable standards are built in, the China national standard and the CDC growth charts, so you can switch to the one your doctor uses. Growth monitoring worldwide marks the age axis in completed whole days or months, with the day of birth as day 0, which is the convention behind both the WHO child growth standards and the CDC growth charts.
For the full pre-visit routine, see what to log before a pediatrician visit.
Keeping a long-term family archive
The app stores your records, but an .xlsx spreadsheet is an open, universal format: it opens today and in ten years, without depending on any one company surviving. Export after each checkup or once a quarter (the app names each file MilkBabyCalendar-[baby]-[start]_[end].xlsx) and keep the files together on your computer or an encrypted cloud drive as part of your family’s health archive.
Switching apps without losing history
Leaving an app should not mean losing the record. Export first and the history comes with you. When you evaluate a new tracker, ask the same questions back:
- Can I get my data out? A structured spreadsheet file is the universal answer. Confirm the fields are complete, especially timestamps and units.
- Does the whole family see the same record? Multiple caregivers should share one timeline; our guide to sharing a baby tracker with your partner covers what good sharing looks like.
- Do the growth charts match my region? The reference standard your clinic uses (WHO standards or a local one) should be selectable in the new app.
Why spreadsheet files are good for long-term keeping
MilkBaby Calendar exports an .xlsx file: a spreadsheet whose first row is an English header (type, happened_at, date, time, detail, note, creator), with one record per row after it.
Four reasons it holds up over the long term:
- An open format anyone can read: Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc all open .xlsx directly, and because it is a real spreadsheet format, there are no encoding issues.
- Machine-readable, so it migrates: the structure is simple and uniform, so other software can read it in bulk.
- Convertible when a tool insists on CSV: if another program only accepts CSV, open the file in any spreadsheet app and save it as CSV. The common CSV conventions are documented in RFC 4180, an informational memo that also registers the
text/csvMIME type (RFC 4180: Common Format and MIME Type for CSV Files). - More complete than a screenshot: a screenshot freezes one view; a spreadsheet keeps the raw data, so you can sort, filter, sum or chart it again.
The right to take your data with you
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Article 20 gives people the right to receive their personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and to have it transferred to another controller (GDPR Article 20: right to data portability). A structured spreadsheet file is the standard answer for that format.
The EU is not alone: privacy laws in many regions grant similar portability rights, and health data usually gets extra protection under them. The MilkBaby Calendar privacy policy explains how your records are stored and handled, whichever region you are in.
No single law forces every app to ship an export button, but the direction is the same everywhere: your data should be able to leave with you.
Field reference
The exact columns depend on what you recorded and what options you selected at export. The table below covers the typical fields.
| Field | Example | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Record type | feeding / sleep / diaper / temperature / medicine / vaccination / supplement / growth | Filter by type to see what happened on any given day |
| Timestamp | 2026-08-14T07:30:00 (ISO 8601) | Minute-level precision lets you reconstruct the timeline |
| Value | milk 90 mL, temperature 38.2 °C, duration 45 min | Base data for trends and averages |
| Unit | mL / °C / min | Avoids confusion between ounces and milliliters, Fahrenheit and Celsius |
| Notes / site | breastfeed left/right, temperature site axillary/rectal/ear, vaccine upper left arm | Context for readings taken under different conditions |
Creator (creator) |
Dad / Mom / Grandma | Traces who did what and when, preventing duplicate or missed medication |
Tip: the .xlsx file opens directly in any spreadsheet app. If a tool you use only accepts CSV, save a copy as a UTF-8 CSV from the spreadsheet app first.
Sources
This article is based on the app’s published capabilities and the following public references.
