How to export your data from Looker
Looker lets any user with download permission export the results of a Look, Explore, or dashboard as TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, HTML, Markdown, PDF, or PNG; admins of a Looker (Google Cloud core) instance can separately trigger a one-time full-instance backup to a Cloud Storage bucket, which is an infrastructure migration artifact rather than a portable data file.
✓ Verified against Looker's official documentation, September 2026
Step by step
- 1Open the Look or Explore you want to export, click the gear menu in the upper right, and select Download.
- 2In the Download window, set Format to TXT, Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML, or Markdown, and enter a filename (or keep the default).
- 3Under Results, choose whether to apply visualization settings to the download, set the number of rows and columns to include, then click Download.
- 4For a dashboard, use its download option to export it as PDF or CSV, or use the Looker Scheduler to send/schedule it in PDF, PNG, or CSV.
- 5For a merged results query, first save it to a dashboard, then download the whole dashboard as a PDF or as a collection of CSV files — you cannot download data from just the merged query.
- 6For shareable live data without a manual download, enable public access on a Look and share its URL with a .csv, .json, .txt, or .html extension, or export the Look directly into Google Sheets.
- 7(Admin, Looker (Google Cloud core) instances only) In the Google Cloud console, open the Looker instance, click Export, expand One time export, select a Cloud KMS key, and click Export to write a backup artifact to a Cloud Storage bucket.
What the export includes
- ✓Query results/data from Looks and Explores, in TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, HTML, or Markdown
- ✓Dashboard visualizations and data, as PDF, PNG, or CSV
- ✓For Looker (Google Cloud core) admins: a full instance backup (database, file system, encryption key) written to Cloud Storage
What it doesn't include
- ✗Data from a single query inside a merged-results query in isolation — only the full dashboard can be downloaded
- ✗A portable, tool-agnostic data export from the one-time instance export — it's an encrypted Cloud Storage artifact intended for importing into another Looker (Google Cloud core) instance
- ✗Exports while a scheduled export job is already running — one-time export/import is unavailable until it finishes
Before you start
- ⚠CSV export prioritizes raw data structure over visualization-applied column order; export to Excel (.xlsx) or deliver to Google Sheets to preserve the visual column order of merged queries
- ⚠Rendered PDF downloads of Scatterplot and Google Maps charts are capped at 50,000 data points (rows)
- ⚠Customer-hosted Looker instances need Chromium installed to produce rendered PDF/PNG formats
- ⚠Row/column limits on self-service downloads depend on whether a user has the download_with_limit or download_without_limit permission
- ⚠The full one-time export requires both the Looker Admin IAM role and Cloud Storage bucket IAM permissions, and can take a few hours to complete
- ⚠LookML model code (your semantic layer) lives in your connected git repository, not in these download/export features — back that up separately
Where to take your data
Free and cheaper tools that can take a Looker export. See all Looker alternatives →
Metabase
Point Metabase at the same underlying warehouse/database Looker used and rebuild questions/dashboards; use your downloaded CSV/Excel files only as a reference for what to recreate, since Looker's exports are result sets, not a model you can import.
Apache Superset
Connect Superset to the same data warehouse and manually recreate charts/dashboards; downloaded CSVs/PDFs from Looker serve as a backup/reference during rebuild, not a direct import format.
Lightdash
If you already maintain dbt models, Lightdash can read them directly; use this as an opportunity to migrate logic captured in LookML into dbt, using your exported dashboards as a checklist of what to rebuild.
Exporting from Looker: common questions
Can I export all my Looker dashboards and Looks at once?+
No single bulk 'export everything' button exists for self-service users — each Look, Explore, or dashboard is downloaded individually, or scheduled individually via the Looker Scheduler. The admin one-time export is a full-instance infrastructure backup, not a per-dashboard file export.
What file formats can I download from Looker?+
Look and Explore results can be downloaded as TXT, Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML, or Markdown. Dashboards can be downloaded or scheduled as PDF, PNG, or CSV.
Does downloading from Looker also export my LookML models?+
No. The download and export features described in Looker's docs cover query results and dashboard output, not LookML model code — that lives in your connected git repository and needs to be backed up separately.
What's the difference between a regular download and the 'one-time export' feature?+
Regular downloads (gear menu > Download) are self-service, per-report exports available to any user with download permission. The one-time export is an admin-only, full-instance backup to a Cloud Storage bucket, meant for migrating a Looker (Google Cloud core) instance — not for extracting your data into another BI tool.
Can I automate exports instead of downloading manually each time?+
Yes — dashboards can be scheduled for delivery in PDF, PNG, or CSV format using the Looker Scheduler, or you can set up ongoing delivery to Google Sheets.
Is there a limit on how many rows I can export?+
Yes, and it depends on your permissions: Looker admins grant users either the download_with_limit or download_without_limit permission, which determines how many rows and columns you can include in a download.
Sources
This guide was written from Looker's own documentation and checked against it in September 2026. If a step has changed, the official page wins.
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