How Do I Get My SF-50 After I Retire? OPM’s Document Request Service at myOPF

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:

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.

It’s just 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.

Because that’s when the service opens, and eOPF self-service access ends the day you separate. The two rules together create a built-in gap right after your last day:

If you’re inside the gap, the answer is a calendar, not a panic.

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:

What’s inside: your eOPF, including the final SF-50 generated after you separated. That document deserves a spotlight. 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 on my own finalized case. DRS returned the complete file:

• 177 individual documents, 214 pages
• from job-application materials dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s
• through a leave record certified seven weeks after my separation
• final SF-50 included

Two things worth taking from that pull. My file had kept growing after my last day, and DRS served the current version of it.

The delivery was also fast in my one case, about five minutes against the portal’s stated “within 24 hours.” OPM’s stated expectation is still 24 hours; mine is one data point.

A few. Sorted 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; I hesitated on it too.
• Identity verification and the phone. First-time verifiers report identity verification working on a phone but not a laptop. 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. Mine did.
• 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. My pull came back with records from the late 1980s and early 1990s intact, so coverage looks like a function of what was scanned into your folder rather than a hard service limit.

No. Reports of partial returns exist (one member described getting roughly 42 pages of SF-50s where a full folder ran 168 pages), and they aren’t the service design.

The complete pull 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. “That’s all you get” is the one conclusion the evidence doesn’t support.

Then the fallback ladder still exists, and one boundary saves people a wasted request: payroll records are a different system entirely.

DRS misses tend to mean, per OPM, no SSN match, an agency that never used eOPF, or a too-early request. 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 escalation page covers the channels. And the early OPM mail that starts arriving in the same window has its own decoder: the CSA number page.