How to Export Salesforce Reports to Excel
Do you need to share your report built in Salesforce with external stakeholders? Or you simply want to visualize your Salesforce data using some external dataviz tool, such as Tableau? There are many reasons why you might want to export a Salesforce report to Excel but the options are quite limited. Read on to find out which tool or solution works best for you.
Export Salesforce report to Excel – methods to consider
- Manually export Salesforce report to Excel or CSV – this is the native functionality that allows you to manually download Salesforce reports to Excel. You can export formatted reports as Excel files or the raw data as Excel and CSV files.
- Schedule export of Salesforce data to build custom reports in a spreadsheet – this is the approach for custom reporting. You can automate exports of specific data entities to Google Sheets or Excel. Based on this data, you can create a custom report or dashboard, which will update automatically with every data refresh.
- Export Salesforce reports via the Salesforce API – this is an advanced approach, which may require coding skills to extract data via the Salesforce API. Alternatively, you can use the JSON to Excel connector. This will let you avoid any coding, but you’ll need to map the exported data in Excel.
We’re going to review each section separately. However, if you already know which of these options to export reports from Salesforce to Excel would work best for you, you can skip right to it.
How to export Salesforce report to Excel natively
We’ll check out the flow separately for each Salesforce UI version.
Note: To export reports from Salesforce, a user must have the ‘Export Reports’ permission.
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Export Salesforce report to Excel in Lightning Experience
- Go to the Reports tab and open the report you want to export.
- Click the Edit drop-down menu on the right side of your Salesforce report and select Export.
- Select the format for export Salesforce report to Excel
- Formatted Report is available for export only as XLSX Excel file
- Details Only is available for export as XLSX or XLS file, as well as CSV
- Click Export – the file with your Salesforce report will be downloaded to your device.
Here is an example of a New Opportunity Trends Report exported formatted from Salesforce Lightning experience:
Salesforce report export in Salesforce Classic
- Go to the Reports tab and open the report you want to export.
In Salesforce Classic, reports do not have an Export button with exporting formats. You can choose them right away with the following buttons:
- Printable View – to export the formatted report in XLS format
- Export Details – to export the report’s data in XLS or CSV
For example, here is what a New Opportunity Trends Report looks like if exported as Printable View from Salesforce classic:
The difference between Formatted Export (Lightning Experience) and Printable View (Salesforce Classic) is obvious.
At the same time, there is no difference if you export report details from both Salesforce UI versions:
This is how you can export a Salesforce report to Excel. Also, check out the restrictions associated with this action.
Salesforce reports for Excel export limitations
- Up to 5 reports at once.
- Unlimited number of rows and columns for Details Only reports in XLS or CSV formats.
- Up to 100,000 rows and 100 columns for Formatted Reports or Details Only in XLSX format.
- Historical trending reports are not available for export.
- Joined reports can include a maximum of 2,000 rows and are available for export only as Formatted Report.
Can I auto export Salesforce report to Excel?
Unfortunately, Salesforce does not allow you to export Salesforce reports to Excel on a schedule. This is rather frustrating because automation would allow you to save much of the time for your reporting tasks.
However, there is always a solution. Below we’ll introduce a few methods so you can set up automation for your Salesforce reports.
How to export Salesforce report to Excel automatically
In the blog post Salesforce Export Data, we explained how you can schedule exports of data from Salesforce to Excel or Google Sheets. For this, you need Coupler.io, an iPaaS solution that extracts data from apps, such as Airtable, Google Sheets, and so on, and loads it to a chosen destination on a schedule.
Coupler.io provides a dedicated Salesforce integration, which allows you to auto export a bunch of data entities including Contacts, Orders, Opportunities, and many more. Reports are also on the list of exportable data entities, but it only exports a list of reports.
Nevertheless, the method we suggest here is as follows:
- Export raw Salesforce data required for the report
- Build a custom report in Excel and link the exported data to it
This will let you automate reporting on a schedule like every hour or every 15 minutes. Let’s now look at how this works.
Example of how you can connect Salesforce report to Excel
As an example, let’s take the New Opportunity Trends Report that we’ve recently exported manually. For this report, we’ll need information about Opportunity History. To export this data, sign up to Coupler.io, click Add new importer and configure the integration.
Set up source
- Select Salesforce as a source application.
- Connect your Salesforce account. You will need to log in to Salesforce if you have not already.
- Select Opportunity History as a data entity from a drop down list.
Note: You can filter the data to export from Salesforce to Excel using the Advanced filters section, for example, like this:
Jump to the destination setup.
Set up destination
- Select Excel as a destination app from the drop-down list.
- Connect your Microsoft account.
- Select a workbook stored on your OneDrive, as well as the worksheet where to load the Salesforce data. Optionally, you can type in a name to create a new sheet.
Here is what the destination configuration may look like.
Click Save and Run to load Salesforce data to your Excel workbook. Here is how it looks:
This is just raw data, which you can convert into a report as you wish.
Build a report based on the Salesforce data exported to Excel
In our example, we inserted a Pivot table to get the format we need.
Here are the steps we took:
- Added a new column with the End of the Month formula to convert values from the CloseDate column.
- Inserted a pivot table with the following fields:
- Rows: StageName
- Columns: End of Month
- Values: Sum of Amount
And here is what our custom report looks like compared to the New Opportunity Trends Report that we exported manually from Salesforce to Excel.
The main benefit of the custom report is that it will be updated automatically with every data refresh that you set up in Coupler.io. So, you can use this method for not only reporting but also other tasks, for example, creating a Salesforce backup copy.
Salesforce schedule report Excel
- In your Salesforce to Excel integration, toggle on the Automatic data refresh feature.
- Then configure the desired frequency for automated exports.
And that’s it! Coupler.io will automatically update data from Salesforce in Excel, so the values in the pivot table will be automatically updated as well.
Note: Pivot table is just an example that we used here. You can create custom reports using Excel functions, Power Query, charts, and other features.
Link Salesforce report to Excel using the Salesforce API
The last option on our list of solutions for exporting Salesforce reports to Excel is the Salesforce REST API. We’ve covered this in more detail in our article on Salesforce Data Export. To do this, you’ll need to complete the following steps:
- Create a Connected App in Salesforce
- Get an access token
With an access token, you can send a GET request to the following API URL:
curl "{instance-URL}/services/data/{api_version}/analytics/reports/{report-ID} \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"
where:
{instance-URL}is the instance URL, which you obtained along with the access token, for example,
https://zrecords-dev-ed.my.salesforce.com
{api_version}is the version of the Salesforce API{access_token}is your access token{report-ID}is the Id of your Salesforce report. You can learn the report ID by opening the report and checking the URL bar.
This step is more technical since it requires you to work with the Salesforce API documentation, as well as write a script to extract data and map it into your Excel file.
Alternatively, you can learn how to connect API to Excel without coding.
Do you need the no-code integration for exporting Salesforce reports to Excel?
It’s believed that wishing upon a shooting star makes the wish come true:) Coupler.io suggests that you don’t wait for this moment, but simply let us know whether you need to have the option for exporting reports to Excel or Google Sheets. Fill out this form to submit your request. Many of our integrations came out thanks to the active users who expressed their interest in particular sources. Good luck with your data!
