Supercharge Your Spreadsheets: Use the Looker Connector for Excel

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Looker enables organizations to make data-driven decisions with a powerful business intelligence platform and a robust semantic model. For many of our users, Microsoft Excel remains an indispensable tool for analysis, reporting, and ad-hoc exploration. With the Looker Connector for Microsoft Excel, you can seamlessly bring governed data to your spreadsheet analysis.

Why Connect Looker to Excel?

With trusted data in a familiar environment like Excel, you can pull data directly from Looker’s semantic layer, ensuring you’re working with consistent, up-to-date, and governed metrics.

The result? You can now enjoy reports that are easily refreshable with one click, instead of needing to constantly download csv extracts. You can leverage your Excel skills by continuing to use your current Excel templates, formulas, joins, and charting capabilities – now powered by your Looker data. By utilizing this connection to Excel, you can slice, dice, and visualize in the tool you are comfortable with. It is especially useful for reusable reports that need to be refreshed on a periodic basis.

How Does It Work?

Once you install the Looker Connector, you can securely authenticate with your Looker account. You’ll run an explore in Looker, download the query definition file, and then open it in Excel. This creates a live connection from Excel to the Looker query which can be refreshed as needed.

Key Considerations

Users who have either the download_with_limit or download_without_limit permissions in Looker will be able to open data in Excel but have different limits as set by their Looker administrators.

  • If you only have download_WITH_limit then you can get “Results in Table” or set a custom limit

  • If you have download_WITHOUT_limit then you have those options, plus the option to have unlimited results.

Downloading the ODBC Driver

Users must have the Looker ODBC driver installed on their local machine where Excel is running.

  • Use the following links to download the latest ODBC installer for your Windows system’s architecture (64-bit or 32-bit):

  • Open the ODBC installer file and follow the on-screen instructions.

  • You may see a Windows dialog that says Windows protected your PC. If you see this dialog, click the More info link and then click the Run anyway button.

Download_ODBC

Opening Your Data in Excel

Ready to connect? Follow these steps.

  1. Open the Looker Menu, then select Admin > BI Connectors page and enable the Excel toggle.

  2. Then open an explore, select your fields, and run a query.

  3. On the top right select the settings icon to choose “Open in Excel”.

  4. Select the option that is best for you, either the current results, all results, or custom and then click “Download.” Check the documentation if you’re not sure.

Download_Excel

  1. Double click the .odc file that downloads, this will open an Excel file with a link to your Looker URL preconfigured.

  2. Now you need to authorize Excel to connect to Looker, follow these instructions

    • Microsoft Excel presents a security notice about blocked data connections. Click Enable to enable the data connection.

    • Windows presents a dialog for configuring the Google Looker DSN. Configure the DSN by performing the following these steps:

      1. In the Auth Type drop-down menu, select OAuth. Although OAuth is the preferred option, you can instead select Basic Auth if required. If you select Basic Auth, you will need to input the Looker API credentials. See authenticating using basic auth section on this page.

      2. Click Login. This will open a web browser that authenticates into your Looker account. After the web browser shows a successful login, close the web browser and go back to the DSN dialog.

      3. Click OK in the DSN dialog.

      4. If prompted, click OK to agree to overwrite the DSN.

Auth

  1. Excel will fetch the data for this query from Looker and insert a table.

  2. If you want to move the table to a different workbook, simply copy-paste the table object or click-and-drag the sheet tab from one workbook to another.

  3. Continue to use charts, formulas, and visualizations in Excel!

pivot_table

Unlock New Possibilities

Whether you’re in finance, sales, operations, or marketing, the Looker Connector for Excel opens up new avenues for data analysis and reporting, combining Looker’s data governance with Excel’s versatility.

Ready to bring your Looker data into Excel? Install the Looker Connector for Excel today and check out the full documentation to learn more!

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Many thanks for sharing this Chrissie, looking forward to trying it!

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Yes! Let me know if you do any cool integrations with it!

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Excellent, I will use it.

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Are there plans to integrate with Google Sheets in a similar way? Setting up a schedule is an option, but for one-time downloads of query results getting the information from Excel/CSV takes the extra step of downloading it and then copy/pasting it over. Having a Google Sheets connector like this or being able to download all results directly into Google Sheets would be extremely helpful!

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Hi, cindyS. Great to hear from you. Have you tried using Connected Sheets for Looker? I would love to hear if this fits the use case you are working with.

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Hi @chrissiea , is there a similar option for Connected Google Sheets in Looker to return “All Results”? It seems like the Google Sheets Connector is limited by the maximum row limit of a Look (5000)

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Great News! Where is the Excel file should be storage? Can it be in One Drive Cloud?

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Which Looker version includes the Excel connector?

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Very useful feature! Which Looker version is required for this feature?

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Well it depends on your admin settings. Connected Sheets can include up to 100,000 rows if you have the download_without_limit setting in admin. Check it out here.

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Hey there, thanks for your comment. You must be running running Looker 25.16 or later.

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Hi there, thanks for commenting. You must be running Looker 25.16 or later.

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This is a great question, I believe you can save the Excel file anywhere after you open it with the connected query. But if you do have an issue with saving the file in One Drive, let me know. I’d love to hear what happens. Thanks!

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Hi. Thanks for sharing the information on using the ODBC for Excel. I installed it and was able to see the data in Excel - so that was cool.

But I was surprised by some behaviour and wanted to confirm the functionality because I wasnt sure if the limitations I experienced had to do with our setup or WAD (working as designed).

I didnt realize you were unable to use an existing Look to Open in Excel - it has to be an explore URL. Is that correct?

I tested and was able to do an Explore from Here from an Look and then Open in Excel but that is extra steps I wasnt expecting. Are there plans to be able to use a saved Look?

Then I didnt realize that refreshing would not work in Excel if you change any field or filter on the “Explore from Here” query used to “Open in Excel” because the slug-id changes.

Now if you are running a report that does say, “Open Tickets”, you may not need to change anything - but when changing a dimension name in lookml, say from customer_id# to customer_id, any explore query that used the original customer_id# would fail to work, whereas you can use Content Explore to Replace customer_id# on reports to customer_id.

So this would seem that changes to lookml dimensions will impact ODBC connection strings without necessarily knowing that one is being used or why it broke (because you cant specifically save it like a look or dashboard so you cant specifically know what fields and filters were being used etc)

Can you confirm / suggest a different workflow to managing the URLs, field name changes and so forth? or a decorder for a slug?

I was able to edit/copy the .odc file and insert the new slug-id for a new filtered list - but that doesnt seem like it should be a SOP.

thanks

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Hi there, thanks for giving the connector a try! Your understanding of the behavior is correct. The “Open in Excel” option is currently only available for queries on the Explore page, and the connection is made to the exact query configuration (slug-id) at the time. Rather than manually modifying the odc file, you can export a new odc file from the new query in the Looker Explore. (However, if you do want to manually update the slug, you can edit the connection text directly in the detailed connection config in Excel, which is a little faster than opening a new file). For now the integration is better for setting up stable repeated analytics workflows rather than freeform ad hoc exploration.

And unfortunately this does mean that if LookML code is updated such that the query definition becomes invalid, it will cease functioning in Excel. When this scenario happens on the Looker explore page, Looker still runs the modified query but provides a warning message about the missing fields. We don’t have this messaging capability in Excel so we didn’t want to run queries different from what the user originally exported, since that could be non-obvious and confusing.

Your idea about using saved Looks is exactly where we’re headed next! When using the “Open in Excel” button from the Look page, the odc file will reference the look-id instead. Then when you explicitly update the Look configuration, the pivot table in Excel will automatically update upon next refresh. We don’t have an ETA for this enhancement yet but please stay tuned. Your feedback helps us prioritize these efforts so keep it coming!

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To clarify, when you use “Connect to Look” in Connected Sheets for Looker, that currently respects the row limit saved on the Look object itself, which today maxes out at 5000. Looker doesn’t yet have a way to save a Look with a higher limit.

If you use “Connect to Explore” and rebuild your desired query, you can pull more rows as Chrissie described.

We’re currently considering an enhancement that would allow “Connect to Look” override the limit saved in the Look and therefore go higher than 5000. It’s helpful to know this is something you’re interested in!

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Hi Victor! Yes, that would be helpful, as otherwise the feature is not really useful. The advantage of scheduling Looks has always been that we are able to ignore row limits, so I would expect it to work the same for “Connect to Look”.

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What about Mac. Can we connect from Excel to Looker from a MAC?

Downloading the ODBC Driver section only lists Windows drivers

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I believe, this is available only for Windows OS, as we don’t see any similar ODBC drivers for mac are available.

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