YouTube Transcripts in Excel or Google Sheets

Scriptube's CSV export already has everything a spreadsheet needs: title, channel, status, and the transcript text in plain columns. You don't need to reformat anything — just export and import.

This is worth doing even if you ultimately want something other than a spreadsheet: it's the fastest way to eyeball a batch's results — which videos succeeded, which failed and why, roughly how much text came back — before deciding whether you need anything more automated. For teams that already live in spreadsheets, it can be the only step you need.

Getting the CSV

From the dashboard: open a finished batch and choose Export → CSV. Via the API:

curl -s "https://scriptube.me/api/v1/transcripts/BATCH_ID/export?format=csv" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" -o export.csv

See the export schema reference for exactly what's in each column — video_id, title, channel, status, text, view/like counts, and more.

Opening it in Excel

Don't just double-click the file — Excel's default CSV import can mangle non-ASCII characters in titles or transcript text (accents, non-Latin scripts) depending on your Windows locale. Instead:

1. In Excel, go to Data → From Text/CSV (or Get Data → From File on newer versions).
2. Select the exported file and make sure the file origin is set to UTF-8.
3. Load it as a table — this also keeps long transcript text in text from being auto-split across columns if it contains stray delimiter-like characters.

Opening it in Google Sheets

1. File → Import → Upload, choose the CSV.
2. Pick Replace current sheet or Insert new sheet.
3. Leave the separator on Detect automatically (it's a standard comma-delimited file).

Sheets handles UTF-8 by default, so this is usually a one-click import with no encoding issues.

Filtering and pivoting

Once it's a sheet, the common filters are:

• By status — filter status = completed to drop failed/skipped rows before doing any text analysis.
• By channel — group a multi-channel batch to compare output per channel.
• By language — if you exported ?language=all, the same video can appear more than once; filter transcript_language down to the one you want first.

A pivot table on channel (rows) against a count of video_id (values) gives you videos-per-channel in a batch; swap in view_count with an average to compare performance, not just volume.

Useful formulas once it's a sheet

The export's columns land in a fixed order — video_id (A) through error (V), with channel at D and status at T; see the export schema reference for the full list, or just read your sheet's header row and adjust the letters below to match. In Google Sheets, =FILTER(A:V, T:T="completed") gets you the same completed-only view as a manual filter, but as a live formula that updates if you re-import. =QUERY(A:V, "select D, count(A) where T = 'completed' group by D") gives a channel-by-channel count without building a pivot table by hand. In Excel, the equivalent is a structured table (Insert → Table) with Data → Filter turned on, plus a COUNTIFS formula for the per-channel counts if you'd rather not use a PivotTable.

If you're going to re-import an updated export regularly, importing into a table (Excel) or a named range (Sheets) rather than a plain range makes a re-import a true refresh instead of a manual copy-paste each time.

If you're scripting it instead

For repeatable analysis, pandas reads the same file without any manual import step:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("export.csv")

# Keep only videos that actually completed
done = df[df["status"] == "completed"]

# One row per channel, total words transcribed
done["word_count"] = done["text"].str.split().str.len()
by_channel = done.groupby("channel")["word_count"].sum().sort_values(ascending=False)
print(by_channel.head(10))

Requires pip install pandas. This is the same CSV either way — the spreadsheet and the script are reading identical columns.

Working with long transcript text in a cell

The text column can be thousands of characters for a longer video — long enough that it's awkward to read in a default cell width. Wrap the column (Format → Wrap text in both Excel and Sheets) and widen it, or add a helper column with =LEFT(S2, 200) (Sheets) to preview the first 200 characters without opening the full cell every time. For anything beyond a quick read, it's usually more pleasant to filter down to the rows you care about first, then open individual cells, rather than trying to read full transcripts in a grid view.

Frequently asked

Will re-exporting a batch give me a different file? Only if you retried failed items or the batch changed since the last export — reading the same finished batch twice returns identical columns and rows.

Can I export just the completed rows from the API directly, instead of filtering in the sheet? Yes — pass include_failed=false on the export request and failed/skipped rows are left out entirely, which is often simpler than filtering after the fact.

What if a title or description has emoji or non-Latin characters? The export is UTF-8 throughout; the only place this commonly breaks is Excel's plain double-click import, which is exactly why the Data → From Text/CSV route above exists — it lets you set the encoding explicitly instead of letting Excel guess.

Next steps

• Bulk downloading — getting a large CSV in the first place.
• Marketing team workflows — sharing these exports across a team.
• Automating this with a webhook instead of a manual import.

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