How to Export Google Analytics Data to Excel

Moving your data from Google Analytics to Excel is the first step toward unlocking deeper, custom insights that just aren't possible within the standard GA4 interface. This walk-through will cover several ways to get it done, including an easy manual download, an automated solution, and a more advanced direct connection. We will guide you through each method step-by-step, so you can choose the best one for your needs.

Why Bother Exporting Google Analytics Data to Excel?

Google Analytics 4 is a powerful platform, but its on-screen reports have limitations. Exporting your data to a spreadsheet powerhouse like Excel gives you the freedom to analyze, visualize, and manipulate your information in ways GA4 can't.

Top reasons to connect Google Analytics to Excel include:

Deeper Analysis: Excel's features like Pivot Tables, Power Query, and complex formulas allow you to slice and dice your data in nearly infinite ways to find hidden trends.
Combining Data Sources: Want to see how your GA traffic data aligns with your sales figures from Salesforce or customer data from HubSpot? Excel is the perfect place to merge those datasets using VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP to get a full-funnel view of performance.
Custom Visualizations: While GA4 offers some charting options, Excel's extensive library lets you build completely custom dashboards and visuals tailored to your stakeholders' specific needs.
Offline Access and Archiving: Exporting data creates static, shareable reports that don't require platform access. It's also a great way to create a historical backup of key performance metrics.
Familiarity: For many, Excel is a comfortable and familiar environment. Sometimes it's simply faster to get answers in a tool you already know inside and out.

Method 1: Manual Report Export (The Quick and Easy Way)

This is the most straightforward method, perfect for when you need a snapshot of a specific report without any complex setup. You're simply downloading the data you see on your screen into a file.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Navigate to Your Report: Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property and go to the report you want to export. For this example, we’ll use the Traffic acquisition report (located under Reports > Acquisition).
Set Your Filters: Adjust the date range and apply any comparisons or filters you need. The data you export will reflect exactly what is configured on the screen.
Find the Export Icon: In the top-right corner of the report, you'll see a share icon (a box with an arrow pointing out of it). Click on it.
Download the File: A menu will appear with two options: "Share link" and "Download File." Click on Download File.
Choose Your Format: You can download the report as a PDF for a visual snapshot or a CSV for use in a spreadsheet. To work with the raw data, select Download CSV.

Excel will open the CSV file, and you'll see all the data from your report, ready for analysis.

Pros of Manual Export

Extremely fast and simple for one-off data pulls.
Requires zero technical setup.
Ideal for grabbing data for a quick chart or to answer a simple question.

Cons of Manual Export

It's entirely manual. This method becomes incredibly tedious if you need to run the same report every week.
You get aggregated data. It exports a pre-built summary from the report, not the granular, raw data behind it.
It's not scalable. This approach is not suitable for regular, recurring reporting tasks.

Method 2: The Google Sheets Add-On (For Automated Reporting)

For those who need to pull GA4 data on a regular basis, the official Google-built add-on for Google Sheets is a game-changer. This method automates the data pull for you, and it only takes a single click to download the updated Google Sheet as an Excel file. This saves hours of manual work and ensures your reports are always fresh.

Part 1: Setting Up the Add-on

Open a new, blank Google Sheet.
In the menu, navigate to Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons.
Search for "GA4 Reports Builder for Google Sheets" and click to install the official add-on from Google.
Follow the prompts to grant the necessary permissions for the add-on to access your Google Analytics account.

Part 2: Configuring Your Report

Once installed, go to Extensions > GA4 Reports Builder for Google Sheets > Create a new report.
A configuration sidebar will open on the right. Give your report a clear, descriptive name. For example, "Monthly Traffic by Channel - All Time."
Select the correct GA4 Property you want to pull data from.
Now, define your report. Choose the exact Dimensions (the "what," like Session source/medium, Country, or Page path) and Metrics (the "how many," like Sessions, Conversions, or Total users) that you need. You can select multiple of each.
Set your date range. You can use fixed dates or relative ones like "last 30 days."
Click the blue "Create Report" button. The add-on will create a new tab in your sheet named "Report Configuration," where all these parameters are neatly organized. You can create multiple report configurations in this tab.

Part 3: Running Your Report & Saving as Excel

In the menu, go to Extensions > GA4 Reports Builder for Google Sheets > Run reports.
The add-on will connect to the GA4 API, pull the data you requested, and place it into a newly created tab, perfectly formatted and ready to go.
To automate it, simply go an additional time to Extensions > GA4 Reports Builder for Google Sheets > Schedule reports. This opens a dialog where you can set your reports to refresh every hour, day, week, or month, keeping your data effortlessly up-to-date.
To get this into Excel, navigate to File > Download > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). You will download the latest version of your scheduled report as a native Excel file.

Pros of the Sheets Add-On

Automation is the key benefit. Set it once and never manually export that report again.
Highly customizable. You can select any combination of available dimensions and metrics to build the exact report you need, not just what's in the GA4 UI.

Cons of the Sheets Add-on

Requires a multi-step setup and familiarity with GA4's specific dimension and metric names.
Data lands in Google Sheets first, which means there’s an extra step to get it into Excel.
Heavy and frequent queries can run into Google's API usage limits.

Method 3: Advanced Connection via Excel's Power Query

For advanced Excel users, Power Query is the most powerful method. It allows you to establish a direct connection between Excel and the Google Analytics API. This means you can pull, transform, and clean your data before it even lands in a worksheet, and refresh it with a single click inside Excel.

This approach is quite technical and involves working with the Google Analytics Data API. You aren't downloading a file - you're teaching Excel how to talk to Google's servers directly.

High-Level Steps for Power Query

Set Up API Access: This is the most complex step. You'll need to go to the Google Cloud Console, create a project, and enable the "Google Analytics Data API." You'll then have to generate credentials (like an API key or an OAuth 2.0 client ID) that Excel can use to securely access your data. This is often the biggest hurdle for non-technical users.
Open Power Query in Excel: In Excel, go to the Data tab and select Get Data > From Other Sources > From Web.
Construct an API Request: In the "From Web" dialog, you'll enter a URL that makes a request to the GA4 Data API. The URL and its parameters define exactly which property to query, the date range, and the dimensions and metrics to retrieve. Using Google’s Query Explorer tool is a great way to help build and test these API requests.
Authenticate: Power Query will prompt you to authenticate. You will then input your API credentials which then gives Excel secure proof that you have permission to access the data.
Transform Data in the Editor: Once connected, you will get back a response in JSON format. The Power Query Editor will open, allowing you to click on-screen controls to easily and properly expand, unpivot, reformat, and clean this raw JSON data into a clean, tabular format your business can work with.
Load to Excel Sheet: Click "Close & Load" to drop the formatted data into an Excel table. From there, you can refresh the Power Query connection from the Data tab at any time to pull the latest information from GA4 without repeating any of those previous steps.

Pros of Power Query

A direct, refreshable connection provides real-time in-Excel updates without leaving the Excel sheet.
Allows for sophisticated data cleaning and transformation before your data hits the cells on the worksheet tab.
Data updates and new reports can then be pulled inside the tool, instead of constantly creating additional exports and new document versions.

Cons of Power Query

Requires a high degree of technical expertise to set up API access and work with the Google Cloud Console.
For beginning or intermediate Excel users, there is a very steep learning curve in using the powerful, but complex Power Query features.

Making Sense of Your Exported Data: Quick Excel Tips

Once you've done all that work by getting your data into Excel, the fun part of your reporting journey really begins. Here's what you can finally start to explore:

Always Clean First: Do your numbers have numeric text formatting instead of numbers or your dates as text strings? Fixing those first will make the formatting much cleaner and help to prevent any frustrating errors while using math formulas. Data from a single source usually does not need much sanitation, but if merging two or more separate sources, you will want all columns of similar data (especially date columns) to have the exact same formatting.
Unleash Pivot Tables: Now, for the real report-building work, you are well-served by trying to answer as many core questions as you can with Pivot Tables. This helps get your metrics to dynamically sum and count things as you want to group them when dragging and dropping them from your Dimensions. For a quick example: set Session source/medium as columns in your dataset Rows, and in the Columns add a count of the number of unique "Session IDs" as your Values, you will be able to instantaneously see and compare the top traffic drivers side-by-side using the data.
Build Custom Metrics with Your Calculations and Functions that Matter: Create important KPIs unique to your data that native GA4 cannot provide. For example, add a Cost Per Conversion column into existing reporting with your financial data by dividing your overall Campaign Cost by each Campaign's total amount of Conversions gained (Campaign Costs by Conversion Totals).
Tell Your Company a Story Using Native Charts: The standard charts and formats offered can empower a user to show not only basic changes in numbers or amounts over a period of time but also provide tools and flexibility to produce extremely advanced and specialized visual charts. These will clearly illustrate the impact on core key metrics, telling each section of your data stories in a powerful report for your business.

Final Thoughts

Taking your Google Analytics data offline and into Excel opens up a massive world of business potential in advanced analysis, customization opportunities, and visualization. Through either a simple, one-time CSV manual report download for rapid data analysis tasks, scheduling your core updates and latest KPI changes to be automated on schedule from within your native analytics dashboard environment, or running direct API connections inside Power Pivot, any user has the capability to easily begin creating insightful content at any experience level. You are fully enabled, so take advantage of the opportunity offered with even the most fundamental tool knowledge. Your business, team members, customers, and data stakeholders from every level of the organization will not take long to discover the great value in all your fresh new efforts.

When our team was running marketing campaigns years ago, we grew tired of the repetitive cycle of exporting, merging spreadsheets, and constantly refreshing pivot tables ourselves. We identified a unique issue from this experience, providing us with new business possibilities to test directly within the existing product. But the true, actionable reporting needed real, genuine answers with more context instead of just complex charts and endless data. Because this challenge was so personal and core to our business at Graphed, we connected it directly to up-to-date Google Analytics reporting (plus Facebook marketing and business sales integrations). This now provides us full access via the native APIs, giving clients our full solution set. This process allows us to use a simple platform request rather than performing tedious exporting and downloading, ensuring current data is manually viewed between different systems.