How to Get Your eOPF (and That Final SF-50) After You’ve Separated

DRS is OPM’s online service for former federal employees to request their own eOPF, the electronic Official Personnel Folder that holds your SF-50s and related records. OPM’s own eligibility language says it’s “purpose-built for offboarding and former federal employees requesting their own eOPF records, or current federal employees without access to a GFE or secure federal network.” That covers retirees and deferred-resignation separations alike. It is not for third parties, the general public, current employees who still have eOPF access, or records that were never stored in eOPF.

Access runs through Login.gov after a one-time identity check, at myopf.opm.gov.

This changes the old math. Downloading your eOPF before your last day is still the easiest path (no wait, no re-verification), but it’s no longer the only cheap path. DRS is the post-separation self-service route now, and the records-request fallback dropped to exactly that: a fallback.

The service opens 30 days after your separation date. Combined with eOPF self-service access ending the day you separate, that creates a built-in gap right after your last day when the old door has closed and the new one hasn’t opened. That gap is the service’s design, not a sign your records are lost. If you’re inside it, the answer is a calendar, not a panic.

The mechanics: you submit the request, and OPM emails you a link to download a password-protected ZIP of your eOPF. The details that matter, from OPM’s own user guide:

• The link expires in 24 hours. OPM verbatim: “The link to access and download your file will expire in 24 hours. If the link expires, please submit a new request.”
• The ZIP password is a formula: your birthday plus the last four of your SSN, in the form MMDDYYYY####.
• The documents come numbered in chronological order, oldest first.

What’s inside: your eOPF, including the final SF-50 generated after you separated. That document deserves a spotlight, because it’s the proof-of-retirement record many retirees otherwise chase for months.

And the full folder really does mean full. I ran the request myself, on my own finalized case: DRS returned the complete file, 177 individual documents spanning 214 pages, from job-application materials dating to the early 1990s through a leave record certified seven weeks after separation, final SF-50 included. Two things worth taking from that pull: that file had kept growing after the last day, and DRS served the current version of it. The delivery was also fast in this one case (the ready-email arrived in about five minutes, against the portal’s stated “within 24 hours”); OPM’s stated expectation is still “within 24 hours.”

A few, and they’re worth sorting by how well-established each one is:

• The Login.gov sign-out prompt is real. Partway through, Login.gov asks “Do you want to sign out?” It reads like a wrong turn; “Yes” is the correct click.
• Identity verification and the phone. Retirees report identity verification working on a phone but not a laptop. The calibration: that friction belongs to first-time Login.gov identity-proofing, which involves photographing your license. If your Login.gov account is already identity-verified (say, from Services Online), the whole flow runs clean on a desktop, no phone step.
• Browser choice. Retirees report the site working in Chrome but not Edge.
• Older records. Some retirees report pre-1995 records coming back absent. OPM’s own troubleshooting doesn’t list a pre-1995 cutoff; its stated miss cases are no SSN match, a former agency that never used eOPF, and requesting too soon. And at least one pull came back with records from the 1980s and early 1990s intact, so coverage looks like a function of what was scanned into your folder, not a hard service limit.

No. Reports of partial returns (one member described getting roughly 42 pages of SF-50s where a full folder ran 168 pages) are not the service design. The complete pull described above returned the whole folder, everything, document for document. If your return comes back as SF-50s only or otherwise thin, treat it as a profile-match issue on your request worth a help-desk follow-up, not as the ceiling of what the service offers. “That’s all you get” is the one conclusion the evidence doesn’t support.

The fallback ladder still exists: your former agency’s HR, or the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC). Those are the routes when DRS has nothing to match, which per OPM tends to mean no SSN match, an agency that never used eOPF, or a too-early request. Allow several weeks for the fallback routes.

One boundary that saves people a wasted request: payroll records are a different system entirely. Final Earnings & Leave Statements, W-2s, and deposit records live with your payroll provider, not in your eOPF, and they never go through DRS or NPRC. Provider self-service windows vary widely, from about 8 weeks to 18 months, so the payroll download is its own errand with its own clock.

Because missing records are one of the most common reasons retirement cases stall at OPM. SF-50 gaps, undocumented salary history, and military buyback paperwork (the DD-214 and the deposit receipt) are confirmed, recurring stall culprits. Holding your own complete folder means you can check what OPM will be looking at before it becomes a kickback. If a records gap has already turned into a stall, the not-responding page covers the channels. And the early OPM mail that starts arriving in the same window has its own decoder: the CSA number page.