This week, I am running a contest on YouTube. One of the criteria for picking winners is that they must comment on my video. So far, I got more than 200 comments. To make my job easier, I want to export video comments to Excel file. Turns out this is easily done once you have a Google developer API key. In this article, let me explain the process how to export Youtube video comments to Excel table.
You can use this idea to export other data for a video too (views, likes vs. dislikes, listing of all videos in a channel etc.)
What you need
You need,
- The video id
- Your Google Developer API key – get it from Dev console
- optional – pageToken if you want to see comments beyond first 100
The YouTube comments export template
If you don’t care about the bits & bolts of how this works and just want to use the template, please download it here.
Input these values:
- Video ID
- Google API key
- optional Page Token
Go to comments tab and press ALT+F5 to refresh it.
This template will fetch first 100 comments of any video. If you want more comments:
- Fetch the first 100 comments
- Make a backup of those comments in a new file
- Note the nextpageToken in the result table column G
- Use this value as page token for input parameters
- Refresh the query and copy the values to backup file
- Repeat steps 3 to 5 for every 100 comments
How to get YouTube comments with Power Query?
If you want to know the behind scenes for this little extractor, read on.
The URL pattern for YouTube Data v3 API
You can use a simple GET request (ie if you paste this URL in a browser or web extract tools like Power Query or Excel’s WEBSERVICE, it will work) to access YouTube Data API (ref).
To see all comment threads in a video, you use below URL pattern.
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/commentThreads?maxResults=100&videoId=VID_ID&key=[YOUR_API_KEY]
Notice the red bits. They are the parameters you need.
How to get the results in Power Query?
Once you have the necessary parameters in Power Query – either by loading an Excel table or setting them up as parameters in PQ,
Construct the URL by combining parameters with the pattern shown above.
From the URL in a column (named URL), use below code to create a custom column to fetch the data.
=Json.Document(Web.Contents([URL]))
This will fetch a Json document with the entire comment thread tree for first 100 comments.
You want to expand it a few times. This path should work:
Items > Top level comment > Snippet
This will add a bunch of columns with all sorts of detail.
Keep below columns:
- authorDisplayName
- authorChannelUrl
- textDisplay
- textOriginal
- publishedAt
- nextPageToken
When done, close & load to see these comments in Excel or Power BI as a table.
How to paginate?
Unfortunately, the YouTube Data API is not paginated with sequential numbers. Instead you must provide a pageToken with the request to get next 100 comments.
You can build an accumulating function that first gets all the pageTokens with something like List.Accumulate.
Once you have such a list, you can then just call the URL for all tokens.
This is just too much hassle for a few hundred comments, but makes perfect sense when you have thousands of comments.
An easier option is to just back-up the data (either manually or thru VBA) and refreshing the query with next page token.
Errors & issues
Privacy warning or error:
This is the first one you might encounter. Power Query doesn’t like mixing cell values, parameters etc with web queries. You can go to Query editor and adjust query options from File menu to ignore all privacy warnings.
You may need to rebuild the query to get the results after this step.
API issues:
It is a good idea to test the URL from your Google developer console. Make sure you can actually see some results there before trying it with Power Query.
Please also refer to YouTube API documentation for help on the parameters and output formats.
All other errors:
I would start by checking my internet connection and errors with either video ID or API key or page token. If all else fails, leave a comment and I will share what I know.
Have you used YouTube API from Excel or Power BI?
Have you used the Google APIs to build something cool in Excel or Power BI? Please share your experiments in the comment section.
Other useful Excel templates:
21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”
Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())
So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.
I like Daily Dose of Excel
I like it.
Just a heads up, you do need to have the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated to use the ISEVEN / ISODD functions. An alternative to ISEVEN would be:
=MOD(ROW(),2)=0
rather than use a formula, couldn't you enter "true" in first cell and "false" in the second and drag it down and than filter on true or false.
Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?
so many functions to learn!
Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......
In case you want to delete instead of filter,
IF your data is in Sheet1 column A
Put this in Sheet2 column A and drag down
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$1,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
(This is to delete even rows)
To delete odd rows :
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$2,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
If your numbered cells did not correspond to rows, the answer would be even simpler:
=MOD([cell address],2), then filter by 0 to see evens or 1 to see odds.
I sometimes do this using an even simpler method. I add a new column called "Sign" and put the value of 1 in the first row, say cell C2 if C1 contains the header. Then in C3 I put the formula =-1 * C2, which I copy and paste into the rest of the rows (so C4 has =-1 * C3 and so forth). Now I can just apply a filter and pick either +1 or -1 to see half the rows.
Another way, which works if I want three possibilities: in C2 I put the value 1, in C3 I put the value 2, in C4 I put the value 3, then in C5 I put the formula =C2 then I copy C5 and paste into all the remaining rows (so C6 gets =C3, C7 gets =C4, etc.). Now I can apply a filter and pick the value 1, 2, or 3 to see a third of the rows.
Extending this approach to more than 3 cases is left as an exercise for the reader.
Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.
[...] How to Filter Even or Odd rows only [...]
very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site
http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/
Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.
Thanks!
Thankssssssssssssssss
Hi Chandoo- First of all thanks for the trick. It helped me a lot. Here I have one more challenge. Having filtered the data based on odd. I want to paste data in another sheet adjacent to it. How can I do that?
For Example-
A 1 odd
B 3 odd
C 4 even
D 6 even
I have fileted the above data for odd and want to copy the "This is odd number" text in adjacent/next sheet here. How can I do that. After doing this my data should look like this
A 1 odd This is odd number
B 3 odd This is odd number
C 4 even
D 6 even
Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
Thank you!
Chandoo SIR,
I HAVE A DATA IN EXCEL ROWS LIKE BELOW IS THERE ANY FORMULA OR A WAY WHERE I CAN INSTRUCT I CAN MAKE CHANGES , MEANS I WANT TO WRITE ONLY , THE FIG IS FRESH, BUT IN BELOW ROW IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THE SOME WORDS FROM FIGS AND MAKE IN PLURAL FORM , WHILE USING '' ARE'' LIKE BELOW
The fig is fresh - row 1
Figs are fresh - row 2
The Pomegranate is red - row 3
Pomegranates are red - row 4
=IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)