# Export monday.com to Google Sheets: free, and what it misses

Step by step: export a monday.com board to Excel and open it in Google Sheets, what the file leaves out, and when a one-time export stops being enough.

monday.com doesn't export straight to Google Sheets. It exports to Excel, and Google Sheets opens Excel files. So the free route takes 2 steps and about a minute.

## Step 1: export the board from monday.com

1. Open the board.
2. Open the board menu (the 3-dot button at the top right) and choose More actions, then Export board to Excel.
3. Choose whether to include subitems and updates, then confirm.

monday.com downloads an `.xlsx` file. The items sit in one tab. If you included updates, they go in a separate tab.

## Step 2: open it in Google Sheets

1. In Google Sheets, go to File, then Import.
2. Upload the `.xlsx`.
3. Pick Insert new sheet(s) to keep your existing tabs, or Replace spreadsheet to start fresh.

That's it. Your board is in a spreadsheet.

![Screenshot of a Google Sheet filled by Monday to Sheets, with one row per monday.com item and columns for Item Name, Link, Person, Status, Date, Campaign type, Budget and Time tracking](/images/feature-sync-items.avif)

## The gaps in the export

The file is a snapshot. It's correct for the second you clicked export, and nothing after that reaches it. A status changed at 10:05 isn't in the 10:00 file.

monday.com's own help center notes that updates written on subitems aren't exported. Only the parent item's updates come out, even when you include subitems.

A single export is capped at 10,000 items, and you can't change the layout of the file it writes. Only the table comes out, not views like timeline or kanban.

A new export is a new file. If you've built formulas, a pivot table or a chart on last week's tab, this week's export doesn't land there. So it gets pasted over the old data, and you hope the columns didn't move.

## The second export is the signal

The export is the right tool for a one-off, like an audit or a migration.

It stops working the second time you do it for the same reason. If you export the same board every Monday, you're doing by hand what a sync does on its own. Monday to Sheets does that job. It keeps one tab per board current, on demand or every 3 hours, and maps by column ID so your formulas keep pointing at the right column. [Build a monday.com report in Google Sheets](/blog/monday-com-report-google-sheets) shows the formula that does it.

[How to sync monday.com to Google Sheets](/blog/how-to-sync-monday-to-google-sheets) compares every way to do that, including the ones that aren't ours.

## FAQ

### Can monday.com export directly to Google Sheets?

Not from the board menu. The built-in export is Excel. Google Sheets imports the Excel file without any conversion on your side.

### Does the export include subitems?

Yes, if you tick it when you export. Updates written on subitems don't come out.

### Is the export free?

Yes. It's part of monday.com, with no add-on to install.