Many companies store invoices, signed contracts, and purchase orders as PDFs attached to Salesforce records. Getting them all out in bulk is not straightforward — but it doesn't have to be hard either.
Why Salesforce Makes This Difficult
- No bulk file download button in the Salesforce UI
- Files are stored as ContentDocument records — not directly accessible in bulk
- Data Loader exports metadata only — not the actual PDF content
- Downloading manually from each record is extremely time consuming
The Right Way to Export Invoices and PDFs
- Use SFDC File Exporter — filter by file extension (
.pdf) to download only PDFs - Filter by parent object — e.g., export only PDFs linked to Opportunities or Accounts
- Filter by date range to export invoices from a specific financial year
- Files are saved with their original filenames, organized by record name
- A CSV log maps every file to its Salesforce record ID
Common Use Cases
- Year-end invoice archival for accounting teams
- Contract export before migrating to a new CRM
- Legal hold — preserving signed documents off-platform
- Finance team audit requiring all billing documents
Use the file extension filter in SFDC File Exporter to download only PDFs and skip all other file types in the same export run.