What is Looker?

Looker is a business intelligence platform designed to help users make the most of their data. As a versatile tool, Looker supports both self-service and governed business intelligence, catering to varying needs of data management and analysis. It enables the building of custom applications with trusted metrics, ensuring that users can create tailored solutions that fit their unique business requirements.

This platform is not limited to mere data visualization; it also allows users to model their data, centralize trusted metrics, and deploy and test changes to these metrics, thus ensuring accuracy and consistency in business insights. Looker's capabilities are enhanced by Google Cloud, offering robust infrastructure and advanced services to its users.

With the future of Looker being powered by generative AI, users can anticipate more advanced features that will further streamline their decision-making processes and enable them to build more intelligent and responsive data-powered applications. Whether used for embedded analytics, self-service BI, or within an existing BI environment, Looker provides a comprehensive toolkit for any industry. It facilitates collaboration through unified measurement, offering a common ground for teams to work together effectively.

How to Export Looker to a CSV File

Manual Export Process

Exporting Looker dashboards to CSV is a common requirement by business users, especially when data needs to be analyzed within spreadsheets. The manual process involves selecting the desired data within Looker and initiating an export action that converts the data into a CSV file format. This file can then be copied or imported into spreadsheet applications for further use by sales managers and others tracking KPIs.

Using Coefficient to Automate Export

Coeficient provides a solution to automate the exporting of data from Looker to CSV. By utilizing Coeficient, users can set up a system that syncs real-time Looker data to Google Sheets without the need for manual intervention. This automation simplifies the process for users and ensures that the most current data is always available in their spreadsheets.

Looker's Built-In Action to Export to Google Sheets

Looker also offers its own built-in action that allows users to send their data directly to Google Sheets in the form of a CSV. This action is secure, leveraging OAuth for authentication, ensuring that data is transferred safely. Users can utilize this feature to export their data to Google Sheets where it can be accessed and shared easily.

Streamline Your Data Workflow with Sourcetable

Transitioning your Looker data into a spreadsheet is now more efficient with Sourcetable. Unlike the traditional method of exporting to a CSV file and then importing into a spreadsheet program, Sourcetable directly syncs your live data from Looker. This seamless integration ensures that your data is always up-to-date, eliminating the need for manual exports and imports that can become tedious and error-prone.

Sourcetable's ability to automatically pull in data from multiple sources into a single spreadsheet interface simplifies your data management. It's not just about saving time, but also about enhancing the accuracy of your business intelligence. Sourcetable's familiar spreadsheet interface offers the ease of use of traditional spreadsheets with the added advantage of live data querying, making it a superior choice for automation and advanced data analysis.

Common Use Cases

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  Fine-tuning a report by applying filters and date ranges before exporting
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  Sharing precise data sets with team members by exporting individual chart data
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  Analyzing Looker data offline or in a different platform by saving it to a CSV file
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  Automating the data export process to save time and reduce errors with Coefficient
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  Controlling data distribution by restricting CSV export options in report sharing settings

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I export Looker data into a CSV file?

You can manually download the data as a CSV file from Looker or use an app like Coefficient to automate Looker data exports.

Is there a way to automate the export of Looker data to CSV?

Yes, Coefficient is an app that allows you to configure automatic data updates and automates exporting data from Looker into Google Sheets.

Can I export a Looker dashboard as a CSV file?

Yes, you can download a dashboard as a CSV which will download all the data and visualizations in the dashboard. Alternatively, you can download all the query tiles from your dashboard as a zipped collection of CSV files.

Will the downloaded CSV respect the visualization settings from Looker?

Visualization settings are applied by default when downloading data, but they can be turned off to download the data as it appears in the Looker data table.

Why do the characters in my CSV file look garbled after downloading from Looker?

If the characters in your CSV filenames look garbled, there may be a conflict between Looker's UTF-8 encoding and your machine's or a third-party application's encoding.