How to export Instagram posts to Excel
Published
To export Instagram posts to Excel, first decide whose posts you mean. Your own posts come out of Instagram's own export, which you then convert into a sheet. Somebody else's posts, or every recent post under a hashtag, need a tool that reads Instagram and writes rows, and a handful of posts can simply be copied by hand. This page walks through all three, what each spreadsheet ends up containing, and when the manual route is plenty.
It is written for people who want a spreadsheet at the end: a marketer tallying entries to a branded hashtag, a researcher coding captions, a small team that wants one tab per campaign.
Which export do you need?
| You want | Best route | What you get | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own posts, all of them | Instagram's own export | Your content and activity, as files to convert | Low, but you wait for the download |
| A few posts from anywhere | Copy by hand | Exactly the columns you type | Grows with every post |
| Recent posts under one hashtag | A hashtag scraper | One row per post, same columns every time | Low once set up |
| A hashtag, every week | A scheduled scraper run | New rows since the last run | Set up once |
Route 1: export your own Instagram posts
Instagram lets every account holder export a copy of their own information. As of September 2026, Instagram's help centre says you can "export a copy of your information to an external service, or export it to your device", from the Accounts Center or Meta Account settings depending on which your account has moved to.
The steps, in outline:
- Open Instagram's settings and go to Accounts Center (or Meta Account settings).
- Find Your information and permissions, then Export your information.
- Choose the Instagram account, pick your posts and the date range, and choose to download to your device.
- Wait for the notification that the file is ready, then download it.
- Open the posts file from the download in Excel. A JSON file loads through Data > Get Data > From File > From JSON in desktop Excel, which turns each post into a row you can expand.
This route only ever covers your own account. It will not export a competitor's posts, a creator's posts or a hashtag feed, because the export is a copy of your information, and those posts are somebody else's.
Route 2: copy posts by hand
For ten posts, a spreadsheet and a browser are enough. Make columns for the post link, the account, the date, the caption and the like count, open each post, and paste.
It works, and it has two costs that grow with the list. Every row is a few minutes of clicking. And the numbers drift while you work: a like count copied in the morning and one copied in the evening are not the same kind of figure, which matters if you compare them later.
Browsing a hashtag this way also needs a signed-in Instagram account, since a signed-out visitor sees an empty grid. Searching Instagram hashtags without an account covers what is and is not possible there.
Route 3: export Instagram hashtag posts to Excel with a scraper
When the posts you want are the ones under a hashtag, the fast way is a tool that reads the hashtag feed and writes one row per post. The Instagram Hashtag Scraper is one concrete way to do that. It is an actor that runs on Apify: you give it one hashtag, a session cookie for an Instagram account you control, a maximum number of posts and an optional date window, and it writes the posts to a dataset, newest first.
Step by step
- Open the actor on Apify from the overview page and start a new run.
- Enter the Hashtag, for example
coffee, without the#. - Set Maximum posts. The limit is exact, so asking for 200 gives at most 200 rows.
- Set Only posts newer than if you want a window, as a date or as a relative value like
7 days. The run stops when the feed reaches that date. - Paste the Instagram session cookie from an account you are willing to use for this. The getting started page shows how.
- Run it. When it finishes, the status message says why it stopped: the limit, the date, the feed ending, or a problem reaching Instagram.
- Open the run's dataset and click Export, then choose Excel.
As of September 2026, Apify's dataset documentation lists the export formats as "JSON, CSV, XML, Excel, HTML Table, RSS or JSONL", and the same data can be fetched over the API with ?format=xlsx or ?format=csv on the dataset items URL.
The columns you get
Each row is one post, with the same columns every run:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
url | Link to the post |
shortcode | Instagram's short id for the post |
takenAt | When it was posted |
ownerUsername | The account that posted it |
caption | The caption text |
hashtags | Hashtags found in the caption |
likeCount | Likes at the moment the run read it |
commentCount | Comments at the moment the run read it |
mediaType | Image, video or carousel |
displayUrl | Link to the post's image |
Some columns can be empty for a given post, when Instagram does not show that value. An empty cell means the value was not available; it does not mean zero.
What it costs
The actor charges $0.0005 per post delivered to your dataset, with the platform usage included. A 200-post export costs $0.10, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing. Duplicates, posts outside your date window and posts past your limit are not charged.
Keeping the spreadsheet tidy
A few habits make the sheet worth more than a one-off dump:
- Keep
urlorshortcodeas the key column. If you combine several exports, remove duplicates on it, since two runs over the same hashtag will return some of the same posts. - Record when you exported. Like and comment counts are a snapshot; a date column next to them tells a later reader how old they are.
- Use a date window for repeat exports. Setting "only posts newer than" to the date of your last run gives you only the new rows to append.
- Choose columns before you export. The Apify API takes a
fieldsparameter, so a sheet with onlyurl,takenAtandcaptionis one URL away.
If the sheet is the start of a research project, building an Instagram hashtag dataset you can trust goes further into sampling and documenting what you collected. If you want the export to repeat on a schedule, Instagram hashtag tracker options compares tools that do the watching for you.
When the manual way is enough
The scraper is not always the right answer. Stay with the manual routes when:
- You only need your own posts. Instagram's own export is free and complete for your account.
- You need fewer than about twenty posts, once. Copying by hand is quicker than setting anything up.
- You do not have, or do not want to use, a spare Instagram account. The scraper needs a session from an account you control, and heavy use can get that account rate limited.
Use a scraper when the list is long, when it comes from a hashtag rather than one account, or when you will do it again next week.
Summary
- Your own posts: Instagram's own export, then open the file in Excel.
- A few posts from anywhere: copy them by hand into a sheet.
- Recent posts under a hashtag: run the Instagram Hashtag Scraper and export the dataset as Excel or CSV.
Whichever route you take, keep a link to every post and the date you exported it. Those two columns are what let you check, merge and trust the sheet later.