May 10, 2026

How to Export Airtable to Excel (2026 Guide)

Airtable Productivity How-to Excel Data-Export

Airtable doesn’t have a native “Export to Excel” button, you export to CSV and open the CSV in Excel. That’s straightforward for most data, but a few things trip people up: encoding for non-English characters, attachment fields, and keeping the export current. Here’s how to handle each one in 2026.

1. Download a View as a CSV

The CSV download is per-view, which is important: it respects everything you’ve configured on the view (filters, sorts, hidden fields, grouping). If you want every record and every field, switch to a clean view first.

Steps

Open the table and the view you want to export.
Apply any filters, sort orders, and field visibility settings, the export will match exactly what you see on screen.
Hover over the view name in the Views sidebar on the left.
Click the three-dot menu next to the view.
Select Download CSV.
Airtable generates and downloads a .csv file named after the view.

What’s included

All visible records in the view (after filters).
All visible fields (hidden fields are excluded).
Records in the current sort order when you click download.
Field values as text: formulas, lookups, and rollups export as their computed text values.
Linked record fields export as a comma-separated list of the linked records’ primary field values.
Attachment fields export as a comma-separated list of URLs.

What’s not included

Field comments and record activity.
Field types (CSV is plain text).
Cell formatting or colors.
Attached files themselves (only the URLs to them).

Want every field? Create a fresh view, leave all fields visible, remove all filters, then download from that view.

2. Open the CSV in Excel Cleanly

Airtable exports CSVs as UTF-8 without a byte-order mark. Modern Excel (Microsoft 365 in 2026) handles this correctly when you double-click the file, but older Excel versions and some locale settings can mangle accented characters, emoji, and non-Latin scripts.

Use Excel’s import flow if double-clicking breaks characters

Open Excel with a blank workbook.
Go to the Data tab.
Click From Text/CSV (or Get Data > From File > From Text/CSV).
Select your downloaded .csv file.
In the preview dialog, set File origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).
Set Delimiter to Comma.
Click Load.

The data imports with full character support, and Excel keeps the connection so you can refresh the file later if the source CSV changes.

Save as `.xlsx` once it’s clean

After the data imports correctly, save as Excel Workbook (.xlsx) so formatting, formulas, and pivot tables persist. The CSV itself can’t store any of that.

Why dates sometimes shift by a day

Excel and Airtable both store dates differently from how they display. If a date appears off by one day, the issue is usually the time zone the CSV was exported in vs. Excel’s local time zone. To control this:

In Airtable, change the date field’s Display time zone setting to Same time zone for all collaborators (GMT) before exporting.
Or add a formula field that outputs the date as plain text (DATETIME_FORMAT({Date}, 'YYYY-MM-DD')) and export that.

3. Handle Attachments

Attachments are the most common surprise in Airtable exports. The CSV does not include the files, just URLs to them.

What you get

A cell with two attachments exports something like:

https://dl.airtable.com/.attachments/abc123/contract.pdf,https://dl.airtable.com/.attachments/def456/photo.jpg

Click the URL in Excel and the file opens in your browser, ready to download.

Download all attachments at once

For one-off exports, three approaches work:

Manually: click each attachment in Airtable, click Download.
Via the Airtable API: write or run a script that fetches each URL.
Via a Scripting extension in Airtable: use the built-in Scripting extension to loop through records and write the URLs (or call fetch on each) to a zip.

A simple Scripting extension snippet:

let table = base.getTable('Files');
let query = await table.selectRecordsAsync({ fields: ['Attachments'] });
for (let record of query.records) {
  for (let file of record.getCellValue('Attachments') || []) {
    output.text(`${record.name}: ${file.url}`);
  }
}

Attachment URLs expire. Airtable rotates attachment URLs every few hours for security. Download or copy attachments to a permanent storage location (S3, Google Drive, Dropbox) the same day you export.

4. Keep Excel in Sync with Airtable

If you export the same view to Excel repeatedly, set up a live connection instead of re-downloading.

Method A, Excel’s Power Query (simplest)

In Airtable, generate a CSV download URL by copying the link from Download CSV. (You may need to use the Airtable API for a stable URL in 2026, see Method B.)
In Excel, go to Data > Get Data > From Web.
Paste the URL.
Click Load.
Right-click the loaded table > Properties > toggle Refresh data when opening the file.

Now opening the workbook pulls the latest data.

Method B, Airtable API + Power Automate

For a more reliable, scheduled sync:

Create a personal access token in Airtable (Account > Developer hub > Personal access tokens) with data.records:read scope on the relevant base.
In Power Automate, build a flow with an HTTP request to https://api.airtable.com/v0/{baseId}/{tableId} and the token in the Authorization header.
Parse the JSON response and write rows into an Excel Online file.
Schedule the flow (hourly, daily, on a trigger).

Method C, No-code automation

Use a connector that already speaks both apps. Most automation platforms have an “Airtable record created/updated” trigger and an “Excel: add row” or “Update row” action. Set it up once and exports become invisible.

Quick Reference

Method	Best for	Live updates?	Plan needed
Download CSV from view	One-time export of filtered data	No	Free
Excel From Text/CSV import	Cleaning up encoding issues on a manual export	Manual refresh	Any Excel
Power Query from URL	Recurring exports without code	Refresh on open	Microsoft 365
Airtable API + Power Automate	Scheduled sync with control	Yes (scheduled)	Free Airtable + Microsoft 365 Business
No-code automation	Push updates as they happen	Yes (event-driven)	Depends on tool

Which Method Should You Use?

Need the data once? Download CSV from the view.
Characters look weird in Excel? Re-import via Data > From Text/CSV with UTF-8.
Same export every week? Power Query from URL with refresh on open.
Always-current Excel report? API + Power Automate, or a no-code automation.

Skip the Export Step Entirely

If you’re exporting Airtable to Excel because that’s where the next person needs the data, an AI assistant can deliver it where it actually belongs, emailed as a summary, posted to Slack, dropped in a doc, or pushed straight to your CRM. Carly is an AI assistant that connects to 200+ apps including Airtable and handles the handoffs for you.

More Airtable guides: How to link tables in Airtable · How to create a form in Airtable · How to import a CSV to Airtable · Best AI workflow automation tools

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