How to Connect BigQuery to Excel – Stream Live Data Warehouse Analytics

Connect · BigQuery to Excel

Get data from BigQuery into Excel

Pull live rows from your BigQuery warehouse into Excel and refresh them whenever you like. No ODBC driver, no exports, no macros. About ten minutes the first time, and the Free plan covers it.

About 10 minutes No coding needed Credentials stay with you Excel anywhere, even on the web

What you’ll end up with

A worksheet showing the live results of a SQL query against your BigQuery warehouse, with a button that pulls the latest rows whenever the data changes. Like this:

Sales.xlsx — Excel

HomeInsertDataQuery Streams

	A	B	C	D	E
1	customer_id	first_name	last_name	country	total
2	1042	Maria	Alvarez	USA	1,284.50
3	1043	Daniel	Okafor	USA	612.00
4	1047	Priya	Nair	USA	2,090.75
5	1051	Thomas	Berg	USA	338.20
6	1056	Lucía	Ferreira	USA	1,455.00
7	1060	Kenji	Sato	USA	874.10
8

Sheet1 Live from BigQuery

Google BigQuery holds your data in its own cloud. Getting it into Excel usually means drivers, connection strings, or exports that go stale the moment they land. Query Streams skips that: a small helper program called the Agent runs the query where your data is, and an Excel add-in asks it for the rows you want. Only the results travel, over an encrypted link, and Excel can be anywhere: your laptop at home, a colleague’s machine across the country, or Excel on the web.

What you’ll need

A Query Streams account

The Free plan is enough for this guide. Sign up at my.querystreams.com.

The Agent on any always-on computer

A small program that runs in the background and calls BigQuery when Excel asks. It just needs internet access.

Your BigQuery credentials

The account or project details and a login that can read the data. Your admin can give you a read-only one.

Connect it in five steps

1. Create your account

   Go to my.querystreams.com and sign up. Pick the Free plan. It is a real plan, not a trial, and it covers connecting your BigQuery warehouse and running queries from Excel.

2. Install the Agent on any always-on computer

   Sign in, open Download, and install the Agent on any always-on computer or server with internet access. It takes a minute and starts on its own from then on.

   Why a small program instead of a driver? The Agent is one install for Windows, Mac or Linux (about 85 MB on Windows, a little over 100 MB on Mac and Linux) that runs quietly in the background. It makes one outbound, encrypted connection to Query Streams, the same way a browser does, so you open no firewall port and set up no VPN. Your keys stay on that machine, and the rows travel to wherever you are, across the internet if need be. The only thing on your side is the add-in.

   The Download page shows Your Access Key. Paste it into the Agent when it asks, and wait for the badge to read Connected to Query Streams. That is the only thing you do on the Agent itself.

   Full walkthroughs if you want them: Windows, Mac, Linux.

3. Point it at your BigQuery warehouse

   Back in your browser, open Data Agents (under Data in the top menu). Your Agent is listed there. Click Add connector, choose Google BigQuery, and fill in the details you gathered earlier:

   Connection name

   Any name you will recognise later, like Sales database.

   GCP Project ID

   The ID of your Google Cloud project, shown at the top of the Google Cloud console, like my-project-123.

   Authentication Method

   How the Agent signs in to Google; the default, Service Account JSON Key, is the simplest.

   Service Account JSON Key

   Paste the contents of the key file you downloaded for a Google service account that can read BigQuery.

   Click Test connection. When it reads Connected, click Save. The connection reaches your Agent within a few seconds.

   Open Data Agents

   Test failed? Usually an expired login or a missing permission. Sign in to BigQuery directly with the same account and check it can see the data.

4. See your data in Query Builder Optional

   You can look at your BigQuery warehouse before Excel is involved at all. Open Query Builder in the portal and pick the connection you just made. The Schema tab lists your tables and columns, and clicking one puts its name in the editor, so you can write a query without remembering exact names. Click Run and the rows appear under Results. Query Builder is on every plan, Free included.

   On Business plans you can also ask Nova in plain English (“show me customers in the USA”) and it writes the SQL for you. When the query looks right, save it: from Personal Core up it shows in the add-in’s Saved Queries list, and on any plan you can copy the SQL into the next step.

5. Add Query Streams to Excel

   In Excel, go to Insert → Get Add-ins, search for Query Streams, and click Add. Or open it straight from Query Streams on Microsoft AppSource. A Query Streams button appears on the ribbon. Sign in with the same account.

   Works in Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows and Mac, and in Excel on the web.

6. Pull in your first table

   Click the Query Streams button, choose Stream a Query, and pick the connection you just made.

   Type the query you want to run. This one pulls a few columns from a orders table:

   Example · SQL

   SELECT order_id, customer_name, order_total
   FROM `my-project-123.analytics.orders`
   ORDER BY order_total DESC
   LIMIT 100;

   Under Destination Sheet choose Create a new sheet, then press the play button (the ▶ arrow). The rows land in Excel in a second or two. Press it again any time the data has changed and the sheet updates in place.

   Don’t know SQL? Build it in Query Builder first and paste it here, or pick it from Saved Queries if you saved it.

Good next moves

• Save the query in the portal so you can run it again with one click, from Excel or Google Sheets.
• Add a filter such as a date range, so the same query can answer “this month” without editing.
• Share the results with a colleague. They see the rows, not your credentials.

Questions people ask

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