--- title: "How to get your LinkedIn saved posts into Excel" description: "LinkedIn gives you a links-only archive. Here is how to get the full text into a spreadsheet, and the one import setting that stops Excel mangling every accented name." canonical: "https://www.linkedmash.com/blog/linkedin-saved-posts-to-excel" last-updated: "2026-09-01" --- # How to get your LinkedIn saved posts into Excel LinkedIn gives you a links-only archive. Here is how to get the full text into a spreadsheet, and the one import setting that stops Excel mangling every accented name. Canonical HTML: https://www.linkedmash.com/blog/linkedin-saved-posts-to-excel Agent-readable Markdown: https://www.linkedmash.com/blog/linkedin-saved-posts-to-excel.md Last updated: 2026-09-01 By [Ramya Chinnadurai](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramyachinnadurai/) · 2026-09-01 · 8 minute read Category: automation Most people asking how to get LinkedIn saved posts into Excel have already tried the obvious thing: request the official archive under Settings, Data Privacy, Get a copy of your data. What arrives for saved items is a column of post URLs and save dates. You can open it in Excel, and then there is nothing to do with it, because a spreadsheet of links is not data. It is a list of things you would have to go click. The version worth opening has the post text, the author and the media still attached. This is how to get that file, and then how to open it in Excel without Excel quietly ruining it. ## First, the honest bit about formats LinkedMash exports CSV, not `.xlsx`. There is no native Excel file and this post is not going to pretend otherwise. In practice that costs you nothing, because CSV is the format Excel imports best and the one that will still open in ten years. What it does cost you is about forty seconds of setup the first time, which is the rest of this post. Open [Export to CSV](/integrations/export/csv) and press the export button. The file downloads in the same request as `linkedmash-export.csv`. On the free plan the button reads **Export CSV sample** and hands you 20 posts from the full library, or 5 if you exported a search or a selection rather than everything. That is enough to check the shape before you decide anything. A [paid plan](/pricing) exports the whole library. ![LinkedMash Export Center showing PDF, CSV and JSON export options](https://www.linkedmash.com/assets/blog/export-center.jpg) _CSV is the instant option in Export Center. It downloads on click, with no job queue._ ## Do not double-click the file This is the part that matters, and it is the part every generic "export to Excel" article skips. The CSV is UTF-8 and carries no byte-order mark. A byte-order mark is a few invisible bytes at the top of a file whose only job is to tell a program which encoding it is looking at. Without one, Excel on Windows does not ask: it guesses, and it guesses your system locale. Every character outside plain ASCII then decodes wrong. You notice this the moment a real library hits it. German names arrive as `Müller`. French posts arrive as `créé`. Every emoji in every hook turns into a small heap of punctuation. The file is fine; the read of it is not. **The forty seconds** In Excel, go **Data > From Text/CSV**, pick the downloaded file, and set **File Origin** to `65001: Unicode (UTF-8)` before you press Load. Accents and emoji survive. Do this once per file; Excel remembers nothing between them. Excel on macOS is better behaved and usually gets UTF-8 right on a double-click, but the import route is worth using anyway, because it is also what makes the refresh trick at the bottom of this post possible. ## What lands in the sheet Twelve columns, in this fixed order, so anything you build on top keeps working across exports: ``` post_id,text,link,posted_at,labels, image_urls,video_url,document_url, author_name,author_id,author_username,author_link ``` Three things about that shape are worth knowing before you start writing formulas against it. The [CSV guide](/blog/download-linkedin-saved-posts-csv) goes deeper on all three; here is the Excel-relevant version. - **One post is always one row.** Line breaks inside post text are collapsed to single spaces on the way out, so a six-paragraph post cannot split itself across six rows and wreck your sort. - **Multi-value fields are semicolon-joined inside one cell.** A carousel puts every image URL in `image_urls` separated by `; `, and your labels arrive the same way in `labels`. - **Nothing will hit a cell limit.** Excel caps a cell at 32,767 characters and LinkedIn caps a post at 3,000, so the `text` column has a comfortable margin even before you count the collapsed line breaks. ## Splitting the labels back out The `labels` column is the one you will want to filter on, and semicolons are not filterable. Two ways to fix it, depending on whether you are doing this once or every month. Once: select the column, **Data > Text to Columns**, choose Delimited, tick Other, and type a semicolon. Insert blank columns to the right first or it will overwrite `image_urls`. Repeatedly: do it inside the Power Query editor at import time instead, with **Split Column > By Delimiter**. The step is saved with the query, so every future export gets split the same way without you touching it. **Or skip the split entirely** If all you want is "show me the posts labelled pricing", a filter on `labels` with **Contains** does the job and leaves the column intact. Splitting is only worth it when you need to count labels, not just find them. ## The three things actually worth doing in a spreadsheet Format the range as a table (`Ctrl+T`) before any of these, or half of Excel will refuse to help you. 1. **Count who you actually learn from.** Insert a PivotTable, drag `author_name` to Rows and again to Values. It counts. The top of that list is reliably not the list of people you would have named from memory, and it is the most useful ninety seconds in this whole post. 2. **Find the topic you have been circling.** Filter `text` for a term across a year of saves. People tend to discover they have been quietly researching one thing for eight months without ever deciding to. 3. **Chart what you save against when.** `posted_at` is a real date once Excel parses it. Group by month in a PivotTable and you can see your own attention move, which is a better content brief than any trend report. ## Keeping it current without redoing any of this A CSV is a snapshot, and a snapshot goes stale the day after you take it. If you imported through **Data > From Text/CSV**, Excel remembers the file path and every cleanup step you applied. Export again next month, save over the same file, and press **Data > Refresh All**. Your splits, your table, your pivots and your charts all update against the new rows. That is the difference between a spreadsheet you built once and a spreadsheet you use. It is also the only reason to bother with the import route on a Mac, where the encoding was never going to bite you. ## When Excel is the wrong answer - **You want it to update itself.** Refresh All still means exporting and saving a file by hand. [Google Sheets sync](/integrations/sync/sheets) writes new saves into the sheet on its own. The Sheets row shape is an eleven-value integration row, not the twelve-column CSV schema, so pick one and build on it rather than switching later. - **You are writing code against it.** Take [JSON](/integrations/export/json). Nested media and author objects beat splitting strings out of cells. - **You want to read the posts.** A wall of post text in a spreadsheet cell is unreadable at any column width. Use [PDF](/integrations/export/pdf) or [Notion](/integrations/sync/notion). - **You want to ask questions rather than write formulas.** "Which of my saves argue against cold outreach" is not a filter. That is [what the assistant is for](/chat-with-linkedin-saved-posts). Excel wins on one axis and it is a good one: it is already open on the other monitor, and nobody you send the file to has to ask what it is. > A spreadsheet of links is a to-do list. A spreadsheet with the text in it is an archive. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I export LinkedIn saved posts to Excel directly? Not from LinkedIn. Its official data archive lists saved-post URLs with no post text, author or date, so the spreadsheet you get back is a column of links. LinkedMash exports a CSV with the full text, which Excel opens. ### Why do names and emoji look wrong when I open the CSV in Excel? The file is UTF-8 but carries no byte-order mark, so Excel on Windows guesses your system locale instead and mis-decodes anything outside plain ASCII. Import it through Data, From Text/CSV and set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) rather than double-clicking it. ### Does the export include an .xlsx file? No. The export formats are CSV, JSON and PDF. CSV is the spreadsheet path, and Excel converts it to .xlsx on first save if you want the native format. ### How many posts can I export on the free plan? Twenty from a full-library export, and five from a search or selection export. Paid plans export the whole library. ### Can the spreadsheet stay up to date automatically? Not the CSV file itself, but Power Query can re-read a file you replace on a schedule. If you want a sheet that updates on its own, the Google Sheets sync is the better fit than an Excel file.