Export Airtable to Google Sheets, and what the CSV loses
How to export an Airtable view as CSV and import it into Google Sheets, the import checkbox that rewrites your dates, and what the file leaves behind.
Exporting Airtable to Google Sheets takes about ninety seconds and works on every plan including the free one. Two menus, one download, one upload.
The part worth reading before you do it is what the file carries and what it quietly drops, because a CSV is a text file and several Airtable column types have no text form that survives the trip. One checkbox on the Google Sheets import screen also rewrites values while it loads them, and it is ticked by default.
Export the view, not the table
This is the piece of the mental model that catches people. Airtable exports a view, so the file contains the fields that view shows, in the order it shows them, filtered and sorted the way the view is filtered and sorted. Hide a column in the view and it is absent from the file. There is no export-the-whole-table button.
That is useful once you know it. Build a view holding exactly the columns your report needs, then export that, and the cleanup step disappears.
To download it:
Open the base and select the grid view you want.
Click the arrow to the right of the view name.
Choose Download CSV.
The file lands in your downloads folder named after the table and view.
Two limits are worth knowing before you click. If you are looking at a view somebody shared with you, the person who shared it can switch off the ability to copy base data, which removes the Download CSV option entirely. And a view with more than 5,000 visible records opens as a 1,000-record preview, so scroll to the bottom and let the whole view load before exporting or you risk exporting what you can see.
Import it into Google Sheets
Open the destination spreadsheet.
File, then Import, then the Upload tab, and pick the CSV.
Choose an import location.
Leave separator type on Detect automatically unless the file looks wrong afterwards.
Click Import data.
Import location is the choice that matters. Replace current sheet wipes the tab and writes the new data, which is what you want when refreshing a snapshot on a tab nothing else depends on. Insert new sheet adds a tab and leaves everything else alone. Append to current sheet adds the rows underneath what is already there, which is how people accidentally end up with three copies of last month.
The checkbox that rewrites your data
Google Sheets shows a Convert text to numbers, dates, and formulas option on that import screen, and it is ticked by default. Leave it ticked and Sheets reads each value and decides what it really is. That is what makes numbers sum and dates sort, so most of the time it is right.
It also changes three kinds of value in ways nobody asks for.
Leading zeros disappear. A product code of 00417 is read as the number 417. Postcodes, SKUs, account references and any ID with a zero in front arrive shortened, and nothing warns you.
Dates are read in the spreadsheet's locale.03/04/2026 becomes 3 April or 4 March depending on the file's locale setting, both of which are valid dates, so nothing errors. This is the single most expensive thing on the page, because it moves records between months in a way that only shows up in a total.
Anything starting with an equals sign becomes a formula. A text field whose value begins with = is evaluated rather than stored.
Untick it and every column arrives as text exactly as written, which fixes the codes and stops the date guessing, at the cost of dates and numbers that will not calculate until you convert them.
There is a better answer than choosing between them: set the spreadsheet's locale before you import, under File, then Settings. Fixing the locale afterwards converts nothing that is already sitting in the sheet. If a date column still lands wrong after that, Airtable dates arriving a day off in Google Sheets covers the three separate causes and which one you have.
What the file leaves behind
A CSV holds one string per cell, so anything in Airtable that is not a string arrives flattened or not at all.
Attachments become a filename and a URL, and the URL dies within hours. Airtable's export links expire a few hours after the download. The filename survives as text and the link stops resolving, so a spreadsheet of product photos becomes a spreadsheet of dead links by the afternoon. The files themselves have to be downloaded separately. Airtable attachments in Google Sheets has the detail.
Linked records arrive as display names. You get readable text and lose the relationship, so there is nothing to click and nothing to join on unless the display name happens to be unique.
Rollups, lookups and formula fields arrive as their value at the moment of export. They are correct when the file is written and never update again.
Multiple select fields arrive as one comma-joined string. Two records tagged with the same two options in a different order become two different strings, which splits any count built on that column.
Comments, field descriptions and extension data are not in the file at all. Record comments, the descriptions you wrote on fields, base guide content and anything living only inside an extension are absent, with no placeholder.
None of this is a bug in the export. It is what a text file can represent. It matters because several of these arrive looking perfectly fine, and a column of dead attachment links reads exactly like a column of working ones.
When export stops being the right tool
The export is a photograph. It was accurate the moment the shutter closed and it never updates again. That is the correct tool for a one-off analysis, a hand-off to somebody outside your Airtable workspace, or an archive of how things looked at quarter end.
It becomes the wrong tool at the moment somebody asks for it again. Refreshing a snapshot means repeating both halves by hand, and if anything downstream references the tab, Replace current sheet relays the columns underneath your formulas while Append stacks a second copy under the first. Teams usually discover which of the two they chose about a month in.
The rough test: if you have exported the same view three times, you are doing a scheduled job by hand. How to sync Airtable to Google Sheets covers the four ways to move the data, including the three that do not need you present.
Since it is our own tool, plainly: Airtable to Sheets keeps a tab current from a base, table or view, from $9 a month with scheduled sync every 3 hours on the $19 plan. It writes by Airtable field ID rather than column header, so renaming a field in Airtable moves the header without breaking anything pointing at it, which is the failure mode repeated manual imports never solve. Numbers are on the pricing page.
Common questions
Can I export Airtable to Google Sheets on the free plan?
Yes. CSV download is available on every Airtable plan, and importing into Google Sheets costs nothing.
Where is the Download CSV option in Airtable?
Click the arrow to the right of the view name in a grid view. If it is missing, you are probably looking at a shared view whose creator turned off copying base data.
Can I export a whole Airtable base at once?
Not as a single CSV. Export runs per view, so a base with six tables means six or more exports. Larger plans offer base snapshots for backup, which is a different thing from a spreadsheet you can read.
Why do my Airtable attachments show as broken links in Google Sheets?
The URLs in a CSV export expire a few hours after the download. The filename text remains and the link stops working. Download the files separately if you need to keep them.
Why did my leading zeros disappear on import?
The Convert text to numbers, dates, and formulas box was ticked, so 00417 was read as the number 417. Re-import with it unticked, or format the column as plain text before the data arrives.
Does exporting update automatically?
No. A CSV is a snapshot with no connection back to Airtable. Every refresh is the whole process again by hand.
What to do next
Build the view first, holding exactly the columns you want, then export that view rather than exporting everything and deleting columns afterwards. Set the spreadsheet's locale before the first import. Decide deliberately whether the convert checkbox stays ticked, based on whether your data has leading zeros or ambiguous dates in it.
