Which file is which in a Strava data export?

Open activities.csv from the export: its Filename column maps each numbered file in the activities folder to that activity's name and date.

Updated November 15, 2026

What is in the export

• activities.csv: one row per activity. The columns you need are Activity Date, Activity Name, Activity Type and Filename.
• activities/: one file per recorded activity, named only by a number, such as 1836025202.gpx or 1243401459.fit.gz.
• Other CSV files and a media folder with your photos. You can ignore them for this job.

Match and rename the files by hand

1. Unzip the export Strava emailed you.
2. Open activities.csv in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
3. Find the activity you want by its Activity Name or Activity Date. Dates are in UTC, so an evening activity can show the next day.
4. Read the Filename cell in that row, for example activities/1243401459.fit.gz.
5. Open the activities folder and find the file with that number.
6. If the name ends in .gz, decompress it. On a Mac, double-click it. On Windows, use a tool such as 7-Zip. You get a .fit, .gpx or .tcx file.
7. Rename the file, for example 2017-10-21_Ride_Gravel-loop.fit. Repeat for each activity.

Things that trip people up

• Match on Filename, not on Activity ID. The number in the file name is often different from the Activity ID in the same row.
• Some rows have no file. Activities you entered by hand have an empty Filename.
• Column names repeat. Elapsed Time and Distance appear twice in the header. That is normal.
• The file format depends on how the activity reached Strava. Files uploaded from a bike computer or watch are usually .fit.gz. Others are .gpx or .tcx.gz.
• A .fit file holds more than a .gpx. Keep the FIT file if you care about heart rate, power and cadence.

The faster way

ActivityTidy does these steps for the whole export in your browser: it renames every file from activities.csv, unzips the .gz files and sorts them into year folders. Nothing is uploaded. It is free for the 25 most recent activities and $9 one-time for all of them.

Tidy my export