Key Takeaways:Shopify lets you export orders as CSV from your admin panel in just a few clicksStores with 10,000+ orders often produce CSV files that crash Google Sheets on importSmoothSheet handles large Shopify exports via server-side processing — no browser freezesUse pivot tables and INDEX MATCH in Sheets for powerful sales analysisFix date formats and encoding issues before importing to avoid data errors
If you run a Shopify store, you already know the data goldmine sitting in your order history. Revenue trends, top-selling products, customer locations, shipping costs — it is all there. The problem? Getting that data into Google Sheets so you can actually do something with it. Whether you need to import Shopify orders to Google Sheets for monthly reporting, tax prep, or inventory planning, this guide walks you through every method — from quick manual imports to handling massive order histories without crashing your browser.
Why Import Shopify Orders to Google Sheets?
Shopify’s built-in analytics are decent for quick snapshots, but they have real limitations when you need to dig deeper. Here is why store owners regularly pull order data into Google Sheets:
Custom Reporting and Analysis
Shopify’s dashboard gives you pre-built reports, but what if you want to see revenue by SKU by month, or compare shipping costs across carriers for a specific date range? Google Sheets lets you slice and dice order data however you want using formulas, pivot tables, and charts. You are not locked into Shopify’s reporting templates.
Combine With Other Data Sources
Your business data does not live exclusively in Shopify. You might need to cross-reference orders with inventory counts from a warehouse system, advertising spend from Google Ads, or supplier costs from a separate spreadsheet. Google Sheets makes it straightforward to combine data from multiple sources using INDEX MATCH or VLOOKUP.
Share With Your Team or Accountant
Not everyone on your team needs Shopify admin access. Your bookkeeper might need order totals for reconciliation, or your marketing team might want purchase data for campaign analysis. Google Sheets lets you share specific views with specific people — no extra Shopify seats required.
Automate Workflows
Once your Shopify data is in Google Sheets, you can connect it to other tools. Build dashboards in Looker Studio, trigger alerts with Apps Script, or feed data into your CRM. Google Sheets becomes the central hub that connects Shopify to the rest of your tech stack.
How to Export Orders From Shopify
Before you can import anything into Google Sheets, you need to get your order data out of Shopify. The process is simple but there are a few choices to make.
Step 1 — Go to Orders in Shopify Admin
Log in to your Shopify admin panel and navigate to Orders from the left sidebar. You will see your full order list with filters at the top. This is where every export starts.
Step 2 — Filter and Select Orders
You have three export options:
- Current page: Only the orders visible on your current page (up to 50 orders)
- All orders: Your entire order history — this can be thousands or tens of thousands of rows
- Selected orders: Check specific orders you want to export
You can also use Shopify’s built-in filters before exporting. Filter by date range, fulfillment status, payment status, or any combination. This is useful when you only need a specific month or quarter rather than your full history.
Step 3 — Export as CSV
Click the Export button at the top of the orders page. Shopify gives you two format options:
- CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs: Standard CSV format that works everywhere
- Plain CSV file: Minimal formatting, suitable for programmatic processing
For Google Sheets, either option works. Choose the first one if you want a cleaner import experience. If you have fewer than 50 orders selected, the file downloads immediately. For larger exports, Shopify emails you a download link — this can take anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour depending on volume.
What is in the Export File (Columns Explained)
A Shopify order export CSV typically contains around 60+ columns. Here are the key ones you will work with:
- Name: The order number (e.g., #1001)
- Email: Customer email address
- Created at: Order date and time in ISO format
- Subtotal / Total / Taxes / Shipping: Financial breakdown
- Lineitem name / Lineitem quantity / Lineitem price: Individual product details
- Shipping Name / Shipping Address / Shipping City / Shipping Province / Shipping Country: Delivery information
- Payment Method / Financial Status / Fulfillment Status: Order processing state
- Discount Code / Discount Amount: Promotional details
- Currency / Vendor / Tags: Additional metadata
Important to know: Shopify creates one row per line item, not one row per order. So an order with 3 products generates 3 rows in your CSV. This means a store with 10,000 orders and an average of 2 items per order will produce a CSV with roughly 20,000 rows.
3 Ways to Import Shopify CSV to Google Sheets
Now that you have your CSV file, here is how to get it into Google Sheets. The right method depends on your file size.
Method 1 — File > Import (For Small Exports)
This is the simplest approach and works well for exports under a few thousand rows:
- Open Google Sheets and create a new spreadsheet (or open an existing one)
- Go to File > Import
- Click the Upload tab and drag your Shopify CSV file in
- Choose your import settings:
- Import location: "Replace spreadsheet" for a fresh import, or "Insert new sheet" to keep existing data
- Separator type: Select "Comma" (or let Sheets auto-detect)
- Convert text to numbers, dates, and formulas: Set to "Yes" for most cases
- Click Import data
This method works for stores with a few hundred to a couple thousand orders. Once you go beyond roughly 5,000-10,000 rows (especially with Shopify’s wide column format), you may notice the browser becoming sluggish or the import hanging entirely. For tips on dealing with common import hiccups, check out our guide on CSV import tips for Google Sheets.
Method 2 — IMPORTDATA Function (For URL-Based Imports)
If you have a publicly accessible URL for your CSV file, you can use Google Sheets’ built-in IMPORTDATA function:
=IMPORTDATA("https://your-csv-url.com/orders.csv")This approach is more useful for automated or recurring imports from third-party tools that generate CSV URLs. It is less practical for direct Shopify exports since those download links expire. However, some Shopify apps and middleware tools generate persistent CSV URLs that work with this method.
Keep in mind that IMPORTDATA has a hard limit of 50,000 characters and can be slow with large datasets. It is best suited for small, lightweight imports.
Method 3 — SmoothSheet (For Large Order Histories, 10K+ Orders)
Here is where things get real. If your Shopify store has been running for a while, your order export might be 50,000+ rows with 60 columns. That is over 3 million cells. Try uploading that through File > Import and watch your browser struggle — or outright crash.
SmoothSheet solves this by processing your CSV file server-side before loading it into Google Sheets. Instead of your browser trying to parse a massive file, SmoothSheet’s servers handle the heavy lifting and stream the data directly into your spreadsheet.
Here is how it works:
- Install SmoothSheet from the Google Workspace Marketplace
- Open Google Sheets and launch SmoothSheet from the Extensions menu
- Upload your Shopify CSV export
- SmoothSheet processes it server-side and imports the data — no browser freezes, no tab crashes
At $9/month, it is a fraction of the cost of dedicated Shopify-to-Sheets sync tools that charge $30-50/month. And you can use it for any large CSV or Excel file, not just Shopify data. If you have dealt with uploading large CSVs to Google Sheets and hitting browser crashes, SmoothSheet is built specifically for that problem.
Common Issues When Importing Shopify Data
Shopify order exports are not always plug-and-play with Google Sheets. Here are the most frequent issues and how to fix them.
File Too Large for Google Sheets
Google Sheets has a hard limit of 10 million cells per spreadsheet. With Shopify’s ~60 column format, that gives you roughly 166,000 rows before hitting the wall. Most stores will not reach this, but high-volume stores doing thousands of orders per day absolutely can.
Even before hitting the cell limit, performance degrades significantly above 100,000 rows. Formulas slow down, scrolling lags, and the sheet becomes frustrating to work with. You can check whether your file will fit before uploading with the CSV Analyzer tool — it shows your row count, column count, and total cell count instantly.
If your file is too large, you have two options: split it into smaller chunks using a CSV Splitter (e.g., by month or quarter), or use SmoothSheet to import it server-side where browser memory is not a factor.
Date Format Problems
Shopify exports dates in ISO 8601 format (e.g., 2026-01-15T14:30:00-05:00). Google Sheets sometimes misinterprets these, especially the timezone offset portion. You might see dates displayed as plain text instead of proper date values, which breaks sorting and date-based formulas.
The fix: before importing, run your CSV through a CSV Date Formatter to convert the dates to a simpler format like MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD that Google Sheets handles cleanly. Alternatively, after import you can use Sheets’ DATEVALUE and LEFT functions to extract just the date portion.
Special Characters and Encoding Issues
If your store serves international customers, you will likely have names and addresses with accented characters, non-Latin scripts, or special symbols. These can appear as garbled text (mojibake) if the encoding does not match between Shopify’s export and Google Sheets’ import.
Shopify exports use UTF-8 encoding, which Google Sheets supports. But if the file has been opened and re-saved in another program (like Excel), the encoding can get corrupted. Use the CSV Encoding Fixer to detect and repair encoding issues before importing.
Missing or Merged Columns
Sometimes you will notice that certain fields appear blank or that data seems to be in the wrong column. This usually happens because of one of two things:
- Commas in product names or addresses: If a product title contains a comma and the CSV parser does not handle quoted fields correctly, columns can shift
- Multi-line item orders: Remember, Shopify repeats order-level data (name, email, totals) only on the first line item row. Subsequent rows for the same order may have empty fields for order-level columns
If columns look misaligned, try re-importing with the separator type explicitly set to "Comma" rather than auto-detect. For persistent issues, the CSV Validator can identify malformed rows.
Tips for Analyzing Shopify Data in Google Sheets
Once your data is cleanly imported, here is how to actually put it to work.
Pivot Tables for Sales by Product or Region
Pivot tables are the fastest way to summarize Shopify data. Select your data range, go to Insert > Pivot table, and you can instantly create breakdowns like:
- Total revenue by product name
- Order count by shipping country or province
- Average order value by month
- Discount code usage frequency
Drag "Lineitem name" to Rows, "Lineitem price" to Values (set to SUM), and add "Created at" as a filter. You will have a product revenue report in under a minute.
INDEX MATCH to Combine With Inventory Data
If you maintain a separate inventory sheet with cost prices, supplier info, or stock levels, you can use INDEX MATCH to pull that data into your Shopify order sheet. For example:
=INDEX(Inventory!C:C, MATCH(A2, Inventory!A:A, 0))This grabs the cost price from your Inventory sheet based on the SKU in your Shopify data, letting you calculate profit margins per order. INDEX MATCH is more flexible than VLOOKUP here because your lookup column does not need to be the first column — check out our guide on importing Excel data into Google Sheets if your inventory data lives in Excel files.
Charts and Dashboards
Google Sheets’ charting tools are surprisingly capable for building Shopify dashboards. A few charts worth creating:
- Line chart: Monthly revenue trend over the past 12 months
- Bar chart: Top 10 products by revenue
- Pie chart: Order distribution by shipping country
- Combo chart: Orders + revenue on the same timeline to spot trends
Pro tip: create a "Dashboard" sheet that references your raw data with formulas, so it updates automatically each time you import a fresh Shopify export.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I Automatically Sync Shopify Orders to Google Sheets?
Shopify does not offer a native, real-time sync to Google Sheets. However, you have several options. Third-party apps like Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), or dedicated Shopify-to-Sheets connectors can create automated workflows. These typically cost $20-50/month depending on order volume. For most small to mid-sized stores, a weekly or monthly manual export and import with SmoothSheet is more cost-effective and gives you more control over the data.
How Many Orders Can I Export From Shopify at Once?
There is no hard limit on the number of orders you can export from Shopify. You can export your entire order history in a single CSV file. However, for very large stores (50,000+ orders), Shopify processes the export in the background and sends you an email with a download link when it is ready. This can take from a few minutes to over an hour. The resulting CSV file can be hundreds of megabytes for stores with extensive histories.
Why Is My Shopify CSV File Too Large for Google Sheets?
Shopify order exports include around 60 columns and one row per line item (not per order). A store with 50,000 orders and an average of 2 items per order produces roughly 100,000 rows and 6 million cells — already more than half of Google Sheets’ 10 million cell limit. Even if your file technically fits, Google Sheets struggles with files over 50MB during browser-based upload. SmoothSheet bypasses this by processing server-side.
How Do I Import Shopify Orders Without Crashing Google Sheets?
The browser-based File > Import method loads your entire CSV into browser memory before writing it to Sheets. For files over 20-30MB, this frequently causes tab crashes, especially on laptops with limited RAM. The solution is to use SmoothSheet, which processes the file on a server and streams the data directly into your spreadsheet. No browser memory bottleneck, no crashes. It handles files up to the Google Sheets cell limit without breaking a sweat.
Conclusion
Getting Shopify order data into Google Sheets opens up a world of analysis possibilities that Shopify’s built-in reports simply cannot match. For small stores with a few hundred orders, the built-in File > Import works fine. But as your store grows and order volumes climb into the thousands or tens of thousands, you need a tool that can handle the load.
SmoothSheet makes large Shopify CSV imports painless — server-side processing means no browser crashes, no timeouts, and no lost work. At $9/month flat, it is the simplest way to keep your Shopify data flowing into Google Sheets for custom reporting, team collaboration, and business intelligence. Install it from the Google Workspace Marketplace and import your next Shopify export without the headache.