Strava export not working: the missing button, the empty file, the slow archive

Exports fail quietly. No error, just a missing menu item or a file with nothing in it. In practice it is one of four situations, and each has a tell.

1. The button is not there

Tell: the more menu (three dots) has edit and share but no export.

You are almost certainly on the mobile layout. Strava's exports — GPX, Original and TCX — are on the website only. In the app they do not exist; in a phone browser they only appear on the desktop site. Open strava.com in Safari or Chrome, request the desktop site, and the menu grows the two export lines. The app workaround has the exact taps.

The other cause: you are on a route, not an activity. Routes export from a small download arrow on the route page, not from the more menu. Dates in the header mean activity; no date means route. Exporting a route covers that page.

2. The file downloads but is empty

Tell: the GPX is a few hundred bytes, or the configurator says there are no points.

The activity has no GPS. Turbo sessions, treadmill runs, pool swims, rowing machines and strength work all upload fine — with time, heart rate, power, cadence — and none of it is position. Strava's own note on the TCX export says it requires GPS data, and the same is true of a GPX in every way that matters: an indoor effort has no shape.

Nothing is broken and nothing can add the missing coordinates. If it is the numbers you want on paper, the data prints draw those without a route. If it is the route, it has to have been recorded outside. Your file has no GPS points goes into the detail.

3. The bulk export has not arrived

Tell: you requested the archive and nothing has come.

Strava builds the archive in the background and emails a link, and says it can take several hours. It also points out that you need access to the email address registered on the account — if that is an old address, the link goes there. Check the spam folder, and check which address Strava has under Settings → My Account before requesting again. The bulk export guide covers what arrives and what to do with it.

4. It is not your activity

Tell: the export options are missing on an activity that is not yours.

The more-menu exports are for your own activities. For someone else's public activity, Strava describes a separate GPX download button at the top right of the map, which gives you the route stripped of their performance data — no times, no heart rate. Activities they have set to Only You cannot be downloaded at all. That is the privacy setting working as intended.

Still stuck

If the file downloads and has points but will not open somewhere, the problem is usually the destination, not Strava — the format guide explains which of the three files each tool expects. And if all you wanted was the print, skip the file: connect the account in the configurator and none of the above applies.