Got the Amazon data-request confirmation email? Here’s what happens next

Step 1: click Confirm

Open the email. Verify the sender address ends in amazon.com. Click the Confirm Data Request button. You won’t see anything dramatic happen, the page that opens is a brief Amazon-side acknowledgement, then you’re free to close it.

The confirmation link in the email is valid for 5 days. If you wait longer, the request silently expires on Amazon’s side and you’ll need to start over at Amazon Privacy Central.

If the email looks off, suspicious sender domain, weird wording, a request you don’t remember submitting, don’t click. Open Privacy Central in a new tab directly and check your active request list. Real confirmation emails are always paired with a real request you submitted within the last 5 days.

Step 2: wait, but not as long as Amazon implies

Amazon’s policy text says up to 30 days. That number is conservative. In practice most accounts see the second email, the one with the actual download link, within 24 to 72 hours. Some users have reported turnaround as fast as a few hours on small accounts; very large accounts or accounts under any kind of fraud-review flag can stretch closer to a week.

You don’t need to do anything during the wait. The request runs on Amazon’s side. You’ll know it’s ready when a second email lands, also from amazon.com, with a download link or attachment.

Don’t resubmit the request to speed it up. Submitting twice puts you in a queue that Amazon de-duplicates server-side, so the second request usually just replaces the first one and the clock restarts.

Step 3: the download email arrives

When the second email lands, it contains either a direct download link or an inline download button that takes you to a page on amazon.com. Sign in if Amazon prompts you. The download itself is a single ZIP file, typically named something like Your Orders.zip, sometimes labelled with the date or a request ID.

A few practical notes for this step:

• The link expires in 89 days. Save the ZIP somewhere durable (your Documents folder, a backup drive). If you need it again after expiry, you start a fresh request.
• Download from a trusted device. Amazon’s own help docs recommend skipping public or shared computers for the download step. The file contains your full order history.
• Don’t unzip and re-zip. Most parsers, OHD included, expect Amazon’s exact archive structure. Extracting the file and re-zipping a subset can break that structure.
• Two files inside. You’ll see Your Orders.zip (or similar) and a FileDescriptions.csv reference file. The reference file is metadata about what each subfolder contains; OHD only needs the orders ZIP itself.

Step 4: drop it into Order History Downloader

If you installed Order History Downloader before requesting your data, this is the payoff step. Open the OHD popup or click the toolbar icon, switch to the Amazon Export tab, and drag Your Orders.zip onto the drop zone. The file is parsed in your browser, no upload to a server, no copy of your data leaves your computer.

Within a few seconds you’ll see your orders rendered in the OHD viewer: sortable, searchable, filterable by year, groupable by month, with an Insights tab showing year-over-year spend. From there you can export a clean CSV for tax software, an Excel workbook for bookkeeping, or bulk PDF receipts for an HMRC or IRS file.

If you haven’t installed OHD yet, this is the right moment. The full walkthrough lives at Amazon data export and backfill. If you want to know the folder structure of the ZIP before opening it, see what’s inside your Amazon data ZIP.

Common questions

More answers in the full FAQ. If the upload fails, see troubleshooting the GDPR ZIP upload.

Why bother with the data-request flow at all?

Two reasons. First, Amazon’s own Order History Reports tool was retired on March 20, 2023. The data-request flow is the only first-party path Amazon currently offers to get a complete export of your purchase history. The full context lives in the Amazon Order History Report replacement guide.

Second, the Your Orders page itself only surfaces roughly 18 months of history on most accounts. If you need older orders, for a tax audit, a multi-year reseller cost-of-goods reconciliation, or a 1099-K filing, the data request is the only way to recover them. OHD’s ZIP-upload feature exists specifically because this is a real and recurring user need.