Retrieve and chart data

After learning how to browse through others' Looks and dashboards, many users want to take the next step and learn how to query data themselves. This lets them harness their organization's data for their own needs. This page outlines the documentation on retrieving and charting data.

Retrieving data using the Looker UI

The following pages help you start building queries with the Looker UI:

• Creating and editing Explores — Learn to build queries, display results, and discover insights in Looker.
• Viewing and interacting with Explores — Learn how to view and discover insights in Explore queries.
• Filtering and limiting data — Limit your results to the data you're interested in.
• Merging results from different Explores — Combine data from multiple queries.
• Looker filter expressions — Understand the Looker filter expression patterns.
• Looker functions and operators — Review the functions and operators used in Looker expressions.
• Adding custom formatting to numeric fields — Apply Excel-style formatting to numeric data in Looks and charts.

Retrieving data using connectors

The following pages help you use connectors to retrieve data from Looker:

• Using Connected Sheets for Looker — Use Google Sheets to connect and view data from Looker.
• Connecting to Looker Studio — Access data from Looker Explores within Looker Studio.
• Open SQL Interface — Access data from Looker models from any third-party application that supports Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).
• Looker–Tableau BI Connector — Access data from Looker Explores within Tableau.
• Looker–Power BI Connector — Access data from Looker Explores within Microsoft Power BI or Power BI service.
• Looker–ThoughtSpot BI Connector — Access data from Looker Explores within ThoughSpot.

Customizing data

The following pages help you customize your queries:

• Using table calculations — Create new fields by performing calculations on the results of your query.
• Adding custom fields — Add custom dimensions and measures that become new field picker choices.
• Creating Looker expressions — Perform custom calculations using Looker expressions.
• Looker functions and operators — Get an overview of functions and operators used in Looker expressions.

Charting data

The following pages help you start visualizing your data:

• Creating visualizations and graphs — Create visualizations and graphs based on the results of your queries.
• Selecting an effective data visualization — Learn how to choose the most effective data visualization.
• Visualization types — Learn about the Looker native visualization types.
• Color collections — View the palettes for the Looker built-in color collections.
• Time formatting for charts — Review the time formatting options for Looker charts.
• Forecasting in visualizations — Add forecasts to Explore visualizations to help users predict and monitor specific data points.