How to export Airtable to CSV and Excel

To export Airtable data, you download a view as a CSV file. There's no button for a whole base and no direct Excel format, and what ends up in the file depends on the view you download it from. This guide covers the download, why a file can come out short, how to get a whole base out one table at a time, how to open the result in Excel, and what happens to attachments.

1. Open the base, and open the grid view you want to export.
2. Click the down arrow next to the view's name.
3. Click Download CSV. The file is saved to your computer, usually in your Downloads folder.

Airtable puts this at the view level, not the base level, and only in its web and desktop apps. Every permission level can download a view's CSV, Read-only included. A few things never come out, per Airtable: record-level comments, field descriptions, the base guide, and data kept only in extensions.

Working in an interface rather than the base? Its pages have their own route: click the … icon in the upper right corner of the page, then Download data. It appears only where whoever built the interface turned on "Allow users to export data as CSV" for that page.

The file is the view, not the table. Airtable includes the field values visible in the view, and any filter on the view can leave records out. So a short file is usually the view doing what it was set up to do:

• Missing rows? Check the view's filters. For every record in the table, download from a view with no filters at all.
• Missing columns? Show the hidden fields you want in the view first, so they are visible when you download.
• On a shared view link? Filters you add there don't change the file. Per Airtable, the CSV holds the records of the view as it was shared.

Airtable doesn't export a whole base as one file. Each table is its own CSV, and attachment files have to be saved separately, because a CSV holds text only. To take a base out:

1. In each table, open a view with no filters and every field showing, or make one.
2. Download CSV from that view.
3. Name each file after its table, so a folder of CSVs still reads as the base it came from.

If what you want is a second copy to work in rather than a file, Airtable's Duplicate base, in the base's menu next to its name, makes one inside Airtable, and every collaborator on the base can use it.

Airtable has no .xlsx download, so Excel is one step on from the CSV. Open the file in Excel, choose File, then Save As, and pick Excel Workbook (.xlsx). Do that before you add formulas, formatting or a second sheet, which a CSV can't keep.

If names with accents or other characters come out garbled, close the file without saving and bring it in instead. Microsoft's way for a UTF-8 file: in Excel, choose Data, then Get Data, then From File, then From Text/CSV, and pick the file. The same works for the files of a whole base: bring each one in as its own sheet of one workbook.

An attachment field comes out as each file's name and a link to it, not the file itself. Airtable says those links expire after a few hours, so if you need the files, download them from the links soon after you export, and keep them in a folder beside the CSV.

Airtable's help doesn't say how linked records and lookup fields appear in a view's CSV. Before you rely on one, open your file and look at that column, and if a table only makes sense with its links, export the linked table too and match the rows up in Excel.

If Download CSV is missing from the menu, one of these is usually why:

• You're in the mobile app. Airtable's iOS and Android apps have no CSV export. Use the web or desktop app.
• It's a shared view. The person who shared it can turn off "Allow viewers to copy data out of this view", and that takes the download away too.
• Your organization turned it off. On Business and Enterprise Scale plans, an admin can block CSV downloads, printing or copying for some collaborators or all of them. Airtable then shows a message that the action is blocked by admin policy.
• It's an interface page. Download data appears only where the interface's builder allowed it.

Each of the last three is a choice the view's owner or your admin made on purpose. Ask them for the file, or for the access you need; they can share it with you or change the setting.

Moving work from another tool? Our guides to exporting Asana to Excel, exporting a Trello board and exporting Jira to Excel cover the same job there.

Tabless is a browser extension that builds what you ask for from the sites you allow; nothing is typed or submitted without your OK. It isn't open yet. An export you ask for is one of the jobs we're building it for: asking in plain words for "every client in this view with its status and last invoice", and downloading it as a CSV or XLSX file, from the session you're signed in to.

It's designed to read through the session your browser already has, so there are no API keys or passwords to hand over, and to ask before it reads each site. It's for lists you're entitled to see, for your own work, and the site's own rules still apply: where an owner or an admin has turned downloads off, that choice stands. You sign in to Tabless with a Wix account.

No. Per Airtable, CSV export is in the web and desktop apps only, and the iOS and Android apps don't have it.

Airtable's help describes no scheduled CSV export, and says that no automation action turns records into a CSV file. Download the view again whenever you need a fresh copy, and keep the date in the file name.

No. Airtable lists record-level comments among what a CSV export leaves out, along with field descriptions and the base guide.

Not yet. Tabless isn't open, and Airtable's own Download CSV, as above, is the way to get your views out today. Join the waitlist, and we'll let you know when you can try Tabless.