How to Export Power BI Data to CSV

Power BI is brilliant for visualizing data, but sometimes you just need a raw CSV file. Whether you're moving data to another application, performing a quick analysis in Excel, or simply need to share a static dataset with a colleague, exporting your data is a common and essential task. This guide will walk you through the primary methods for exporting data from Power BI to a CSV file, from simple one-click exports to more advanced techniques.

Why Export Data from Power BI Anyway?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Your interactive dashboard is the star of the show, but there are plenty of valid reasons to pull your data out into a simple CSV format:

• Ad-Hoc Analysis: Power BI is powerful, but sometimes you want the comfort and flexibility of Excel or Google Sheets for some quick calculations, a pivot table, or a one-off analysis your dashboard isn't built for.
• Data Sharing: Not everyone on your team or in your client's organization has a Power BI license or knows how to use it. A CSV is a universal format that anyone can open.
• Data Integration: You might need to use the cleaned, transformed data from Power BI as an input for another software tool, a script, or a different reporting system that accepts CSV uploads.
• Archiving and Auditing: Creating snapshots of your data at a specific point in time can be crucial for archiving, record-keeping, or auditing purposes.

Whatever your reason, the process is straightforward once you know where to look.

Method 1: Exporting Data Directly from a Visual

This is the most common and direct method for exporting data you're currently looking at in a Power BI report. It’s perfect when you see a chart or table and want to grab the specific data that feeds into it.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Navigate to the report either in the Power BI service (the web version) or Power BI Desktop.
2. Hover your cursor over the visual (a bar chart, line chart, table, etc.) you want to export data from.
3. The "More options" icon, which looks like three dots (...), will appear in the top-right corner of the visual. Click it.
4. From the dropdown menu, select Export data.

After you click "Export data," you'll be presented with a dialog box. Here, you need to make a crucial choice about the format and data type.

Summarized Data vs. Underlying Data: What's the Difference?

When you export from a visual, Power BI gives you two main options for structuring your CSV file. Understanding the difference is crucial to getting the data you actually need.

1. Summarized data

Think of this as the "What You See Is What You Get" option. It exports the data exactly as it's aggregated or summarized in your visual.

• What it does: It gives you a CSV file containing only the columns and rows used to create the current view of the visual.
• Example: Let's say you have a bar chart showing Total Sales Amount by Country. Exporting the "Summarized data" will produce a simple CSV with two columns: "Country" and "Sum of Sales Amount." You'll get one row for each country displayed in the chart.
• When to use it: This is perfect when you need a high-level summary that matches your visual. It's clean, simple, and ready to use without further cleanup.

File Format for Summarized Data

When you choose "Summarized data," you can often pick between an .xlsx (Excel) file, which maintains some formatting, or a .csv file. For our purposes, you'll select the "Data with current layout (.csv)" option.

2. Underlying data

This option goes a level deeper. It exports the raw, row-level data from your data table that is being used to build the visual, including any active filters.

• What it does: Instead of the aggregated view, it gives you all the individual rows that make up the data points in your visual.
• Example: For the same Total Sales Amount by Country chart, exporting the "Underlying data" will not just give you the countries and total sales. It might give you a CSV with columns like OrderID, CustomerName, Product, UnitsSold, and SalePrice for every single transaction that contributed to the totals in that chart.
• When to use it: Use this when you need the granular details for in-depth analysis. If an executive sees that sales were $500k in the UK and asks, "Which clients in the UK made the biggest purchases?" the underlying data will give you the answer.

Key limitations to know:

• Row Limits: Power BI imposes limits on how many rows you can export. For "Summarized data" exported to CSV, the limit is typically 30,000 rows. For "Underlying data," the limit is much higher but can be controlled by a Power BI admin, often set around 150,000 rows. If your visual relies on more data than the limit, Power BI will export a truncated sample and show a warning.
• Admin Settings: Your company's Power BI administrator can disable data exporting for certain users or for the entire organization for security reasons. If the "Export data" option is grayed out or missing, you'll need to check your permissions.
• Live Connections: If your report is built on a live connection to a data model (like an AAS or SSAS model), the "Underlying data" option may be unavailable.

Method 2: Export an Entire Table Using the Data View

What if you don't care about a specific visual and just want to export an entire clean table from your data model? You can do this easily from the Data view in Power BI Desktop.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Open your Power BI file (the .pbix file) in Power BI Desktop.
2. On the far left-hand side, click on the Data view icon (it looks like a small grid or table).
3. The pane on the right side will list all the tables in your data model. Select the table you wish to export.
4. With the table displayed in the main window, right-click anywhere on the table name in the right-hand Fields pane.
5. Select Copy table from the context menu.
6. Open a new workbook in Excel or Google Sheets.
7. Simply paste the data (Ctrl + V or Cmd + V). The entire table's contents will appear.
8. From your spreadsheet program, you can now do a "Save As" or "Download" and choose the CSV format.

This method is excellent for grabbing a full, clean dataset before any report filters have been applied. However, it's a manual copy-paste process and is only feasible in Power BI Desktop, not the service.

Method 3: Advanced Exporting with DAX Studio

For more technical users who need to bypass some of the standard export limitations or grab data in a very specific way, an external tool called DAX Studio is the ultimate solution. It’s a free, powerful tool that connects directly to your Power BI data model.

When to Consider DAX Studio:

• You need to export more rows than Power BI's built-in limits allow.
• You want to export a custom table created with a DAX query that doesn’t exist as a physical table in your model.
• You need to automate export processes (though this is a much more advanced use case).

Step-by-Step Overview:

1. Download and install DAX Studio (it’s well-regarded in the Power BI community).
2. Open your Power BI Desktop file.
3. Launch DAX Studio. It will automatically detect your open PBIX file. Select it and click Connect.
4. In the main query window, you can write a simple DAX query to select the data you want. To export a complete table, simply write:
5. In the "Output" section at the bottom, select File instead of Grid.
6. Choose CSV File as the file type and specify a path where you want to save your file.
7. Click the Run button. DAX Studio will execute the query and stream all the data directly to your CSV file on disk.

This method has a steeper learning curve because it requires basic DAX knowledge, but it offers the most power and flexibility, especially for handling very large datasets.

Final Thoughts

Getting your data out of Power BI and into a CSV file is a fundamental skill that opens up new possibilities for analysis and sharing. Whether you're using the simple one-click export from a visual, copying an entire table from the Data view, or leveraging a tool like DAX Studio for advanced needs, you now have the steps to get the job done. Each method has its place, depending on whether you need a quick summary or a complete, granular dataset.

Oftentimes, the need to constantly export CSVs is a sign of friction in how you access and share insights. Building new custom reports or even answering simple follow-up questions can turn into a manual-export-and-spreadsheet drill. This is a core problem we designed Graphed to solve. You can connect your marketing and sales data sources one time, then create new dashboards and get answers just by asking in plain English - no exporting required. You can build a live, shareable dashboard that always shows real-time data in seconds, freeing you from the manual cycle of exporting to CSV every week.