How to export Facebook ads data to Excel or Google Sheets

To export Facebook ads data, you build a report of your ad account's results and export it as a CSV or XLSX file, which Excel and Google Sheets open. The report lives in Ads Reporting, the part of Ads Manager made for this, and the choices that matter come before the export: the date range, the columns and the breakdowns. This guide covers the export, opening it in Excel or Google Sheets, and making next month's report one click.

Per Meta, Ads Reporting is where you create, customize, export, share and schedule reports on your ad performance, with breakdowns, filters and sorting. You need administrator, advertiser or analyst access to the ad account, and the report has to be saved before you export it. There are two ways in:

• From the left menu, under Business tools, choose Analyze and report, then Reports.
• From Ads Manager, open the Reports drop-down, or the Export menu under its Export data header, and choose Create custom report.

1. Start the report. In Ads Manager, choose Create custom report, from the Reports drop-down or the Export menu. Meta also offers a report from a template.
2. Set the date range. Pick the period first. Meta's maximum reporting window is 37 months back from the day you ask.
3. Choose the metrics. In the Metrics tab on the left, add what you report on, such as reach, impressions, results and cost per result, and remove the rest. The file has the columns the report has.
4. Add breakdowns and filters. Break the results down by demographics, by the actions people took on your ads, or by time, and filter to the campaigns you need.
5. Save it, then export. Save the report, then select Export and choose .csv or .xlsx.

Once a report is saved, exporting it again doesn't mean rebuilding it. Open Ads Reporting, where your saved reports are listed in a table, then either tick the box beside the report's name and select Export, or open the report and select Export there, choosing the format on the same screen.

To send a report to someone, you can share a link to it instead. Meta notes that only people with access to the ad account can open a report, so for anyone else, export it and send them the file.

Choose .xlsx and the file opens in Excel as a workbook, ready to sort and chart. Choose .csv when the file is going into another tool, and open it through Data, then From Text/CSV, so you can set each column's type before it loads. Either way, check two things before you build on it:

• Dates. If a day column sorts as text, select it, use Data, then Text to Columns, and choose Date in the last step with the order your file uses.
• Money and counts. If a cost or result column won't add up, it was read as text. Select it, and use the warning marker's Convert to Number, or multiply the column by 1.

For the other ways a spreadsheet goes wrong, the general fixes for pasted lists in our guide to exporting a list from any site apply here too.

Export the report as .csv, then in a new Google Sheets file choose File, then Import, then Upload, pick the file, and import it into a new sheet. If the same report goes into the same sheet every month, import each new file into a fresh tab and keep your charts on a tab of their own that points at it.

Meta's help now calls the tools Meta Ads Manager and Meta Ads Reporting, so a Meta ads export is the export above under its newer name. If an older guide sends you to a Facebook menu you can't find, look for the same name with Meta in front of it.

• Keep the saved report. Next month, open it, change the date range and export it again: the columns and breakdowns stay as you left them.
• Have it emailed. In a saved report, turn on the scheduled email (from the link under the report name or the cog at the top right, depending on your version), add who gets it, apply and save. Meta schedules emails for a report of one ad account only; a report across several accounts cannot be scheduled.
• Or use Meta's add-in for Excel. Meta Ads Manager for Excel downloads your ad results into Excel 2016, can put several ad accounts in one report and can refresh the data once a day or every 15 minutes.

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 like this one is the kind of job we're building it for: asking in plain words for "last month's campaigns with spend, results and cost per result, one row each", and getting it as a CSV or XLSX file with just those columns.

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. You sign in to Tabless with a Wix account.

Usually because the two are not showing the same thing. Check that the report and the Ads Manager view use the same date range, the same filters and the same breakdowns, and compare one campaign on one day before you compare totals.

Meta Ads Manager for Excel can put several ad accounts in one report. In Ads Reporting, a report across several accounts can't be scheduled for email, so export it by hand, or export each account and stack the files in one sheet.

Not yet. Tabless isn't open, and exports like this one are among the jobs we're building it for. Join the waitlist, and we'll let you know when you can try Tabless.