How to add "Data last updated" in the Looker studio report

There are a few options for presenting this info:

#1 - If your data is updated whenever your report is opened or the “refresh data” button is selected, here’s a solution:

Screen Recording 2024-09-02 at 5.11.51 PM.gif

  • Create a table with a single dimension. The formula for that dimension should be: CURRENT_DATE TIME(). I am in EST, so I used >>CURRENT_DATETIME(“EST”)<<.
  • Remove metrics. Change Number of Rows from Pagination to “Top N”.
  • Remove headers, row numbers, & any other formatting so that you ONLY have the text from the formula.

#2 - If your data is not updated consistently, see if your dataset has a timestamp. Then write a formula to display the most recent timestamp from within (I’m guessing that won’t work because you asked this question).

#3 - I use a more customized solution where my DWH team generates two CSV files which feed in via SFTP + 3rd Party Connectors. One CSV files contains the data + updates. The second CSV file has the date-time of when the data was generated (just before it was published). I use that custom time-stamp in a broken down table.

There are probably other solutions that could work the that I’ve never needed to explore.

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