How to Export Instagram Followers to Excel

Getting a handle on your Instagram followers is about more than just watching a number go up. It’s about understanding who your community is, what they care about, and how you can better connect with them. Exporting your follower list to a spreadsheet is a powerful way to turn a simple number into a valuable resource for audience analysis, outreach, and strategy. This guide breaks down exactly how to export your followers to Excel, convert the data into a usable format, and start gaining insights that will help you grow your brand organically.

Why Bother Exporting Your Instagram Followers?

Before getting into the how, let’s quickly cover the why. Pulling your follower data out of the app and into a spreadsheet opens up a world of new possibilities that you simply can't do within the Instagram interface itself. It turns a passive list into an active asset.

Deep Dive Into Your Audience Demographics

While Instagram's built-in analytics provide great top-level demographic data like age, gender, and location, a raw list of your followers allows for more granular, manual analysis. You can start to spot patterns in usernames, bios, and profile types. Are they other businesses in your niche? Are they content creators? Are they potential customers? A spreadsheet is the first step to truly segmenting your audience beyond what Instagram offers.

Identify Potential Collaborators and Brand Advocates

Your follower list is a goldmine of potential partners. Scrolling through a spreadsheet allows you to actively search for other creators, influencers, or brands that align with your own. You might find a micro-influencer who is already a huge fan of what you do, or a complementary business perfect for a joint giveaway. These are opportunities that are easily missed when you’re just passively looking at a list inside the app.

Perform an Audience Health Check

Not all followers are created equal. A list in Excel makes it much easier to spot suspicious-looking accounts, potential bots, or spam profiles that could be hurting your engagement rate. By sorting and filtering your list, you can identify patterns like usernames with lots of numbers, profiles with no posts, or accounts that follow thousands of people but have no followers themselves. Performing this cleanse can improve your overall account health and ensure your content is reaching real people.

Build Lookalike Audiences for Paid Ads

For those running paid campaigns on Meta, a clean list of your most engaged customers or advocates can be uploaded to Ads Manager to create a powerful lookalike audience. This tells Meta's algorithm to find new people who share characteristics with your best existing followers, making your ad spend incredibly efficient. It starts with having that clean data in a spreadsheet format.

The Official Method: Requesting Your Data Directly from Instagram

First and foremost, the safest and only officially supported way to get your data is by requesting it directly from Instagram. While other third-party tools claim to do this instantly, they often violate Instagram’s terms of service and can put your account security at risk. The official method takes a bit more time and effort, but it's the right way to do it.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Go to Your Profile: Open the Instagram app and tap on your profile picture in the bottom-right corner.
2. Access the Menu: Tap the "hamburger" menu (the three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner.
3. Navigate to Your Activity: Select "Your activity" from the menu.
4. Find "Download Your Information": Scroll down to the bottom of this list and tap on "Download your information."
5. Request a Download: You'll see an option to "Request a download." Here, you can choose to download a complete copy of your data or select specific types of information. To get just your followers, choose "Select types of information."
6. Specify the Information: Scroll through the list and find "Followers and following." Check the box next to it and hit "Next."
7. Choose Your Format and Date Range: This is the most important step. In the "Format" dropdown menu, you must select JSON. The HTML format is easy to read for a human but impossible to analyze in a spreadsheet. Set a date range (or leave it as "All time") and tap "Submit request."

Instagram will then begin compiling your data. This can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending on how much data you have. Once it's ready, you'll receive an email with a link to download a ZIP file. Get it downloaded, as the link expires after a few days.

The Hurdle: Converting JSON Data into an Excel-Friendly Format

When you unzip the file, you’ll find a folder structure inside. Look for the "followers_and_following" folder, and inside that, you’ll see files like `followers_1.json`. If you try to open this with Excel, it's going to look like a jumbled mess of code. That's because JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a data format meant for machines, not for spreadsheets.

Don’t worry. Here are two straightforward methods to convert this file into a clean, organized spreadsheet.

Method 1: Using a Free Online Converter (The Quick Way)

The easiest option is to use a free online tool to do the conversion for you. There are many websites that convert JSON to CSV (Comma Separated Values), which Excel can open perfectly.

• Important Note on Privacy: Be mindful of your data privacy. You are uploading your follower list to a third-party website. While follower lists aren't highly sensitive data, it's good practice to choose a reputable converter and understand that your data is being processed on their servers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Search online for a "JSON to CSV converter." Options like ConvertCSV are popular and easy to use.
2. Upload your `followers_1.json` file to the website.
3. The tool will parse the data and show you a preview of the columns and rows.
4. From there, you can download the result as a CSV file.
5. Open the downloaded CSV file with Excel or Google Sheets. It should open as a clean, structured list.

Method 2: Using Power Query in Excel (The Pro Way)

If you prefer to keep your data on your own machine and have access to a modern version of Microsoft Excel, you can use the built-in Power Query tool. This might sound intimidating, but it's surprisingly simple once you walk through the steps. It’s also a powerful skill to learn for handling all kinds of data.

1. Open a Blank Excel Workbook: Start fresh.
2. Go to the "Data" Tab: At the top, click on the "Data" tab in the ribbon.
3. Get Data From a File: In the "Get & Transform Data" section, click on "Get Data," then "From File," then "From JSON."
4. Select Your JSON File: A file browser window will pop up. Navigate to where you saved your Instagram data and select the `followers_1.json` file.
5. Open the Power Query Editor: A new window called the Power Query Editor will appear, showing your data as a "List." This is where the magic happens.
6. Convert to a Table: At the top left, find the menu that says "Into Table." Click it, leave the default options in the pop-up as they are, and click "OK." You'll now have a single column named "Column1" filled with rows that say "[Record]." This is progress!
7. Expand the Data: Next to the "Column1" heading, you'll see a small button with two arrows pointing in opposite directions. This is the "Expand" button. Click it.
   
   You'll see a list of available fields emerge, likely something titled `string_list_data`. Check the box at the top to select all fields (or just the ones you need), and uncheck the "Use original column name as prefix" box. Click "OK."
8. Revel in Your Clean Data: Voila! Your data has now been expanded into cleanly organized columns. You'll likely see a column for usernames, another for their profile href (URL), and a timestamp for when they followed you.
9. Close & Load: At the top left, click "Close & Load." The Power Query Editor will close, and your structured data will be imported directly into your Excel sheet, perfectly formatted and ready for analysis.

Now That You Have the Data, What Can You Do With It?

You’ve done the hard part. Now you have a clean list of all your Instagram followers in a spreadsheet. Here are a few actionable ideas to get you started:

• Sort and Clean: Start by sorting the data alphabetically by username. This can help you easily spot clusters of suspicious accounts that often have similar names.
• Find Keywords: Use Excel's search or filter function (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) to scan for keywords in usernames. For example, if you're a photography brand, you could search for "photo," "visuals," or "creative." This is a quick way to find other creators or businesses in your niche.
• Manual Spot-Checks: Your list will include the profile URL for each follower. Dedicate some time to clicking through and manually spot-checking interesting accounts. This is the best way to uncover hidden gems - passionate fans, potential collaborators, or customers you didn't know you had. Organize your findings by adding a new column in Excel to make notes (e.g., "Potential collaborator," "Super fan," "Bot check").
• Track Follower Growth Over Time: The data includes a timestamp. If you download your follower list quarterly, you can start building a historical record of your growth and even use Pivot Tables in Excel to see how many new followers you gained in a specific month or year.

Final Thoughts

Transforming your Instagram follower list from a vanity metric into a tangible asset puts you in a position of power. By using Instagram's official download tool and a simple conversion method, you can unlock a deeper understanding of your audience, identify strategic opportunities for collaboration, and maintain a healthier, more engaged community.

While digging into a spreadsheet reveals a lot about who is in your audience, a tool that shows you what resonates with them is just as critical for your daily strategy. At Postbase, we designed our platform to make the action-side of social media management as simple as possible. Our clean analytics dashboard shows you at a glance which Reels are getting views and which topics drive real conversation through a centralized inbox, so you can spend less time guessing and more time creating content you know your community will love. With Postbase, you can manage your entire social media presence - planning, scheduling, engagement, and analytics - without wrestling with clunky tools or complicated reports.