YouTube Studio only shows comments on your own channel, and even then there's no clean "export to spreadsheet" button. For competitor videos, launch reactions, or audience research on any public video, you need to pull the comments yourself.
This guide exports comments from any public YouTube video or Short into a CSV that opens directly in Excel — one row per comment.
The columns you'll get
The Clean export (default) gives you one comment per row with these fields:
- Author name (channel display name)
- Channel handle / username
- Comment text (Unicode-safe — emoji and non-Latin scripts render correctly in UTF-8)
- Like count
- Reply count
- Timestamp (UTC)
- Language
- Pinned (TRUE / FALSE)
- Comment ID
- Reply-to ID (which comment this reply belongs under)
- Profile picture URL
Need every raw metadata field? Switch to the Raw export for the full set the API exposes.
Step-by-step
1. Copy the video URL
Any of these public YouTube URL types work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...https://www.youtube.com/shorts/...https://youtu.be/...
2. Open the YouTube exporter
Go to zocialcomment.com/export/youtube and paste the URL — one video per export, each downloading as its own CSV.
3. Click "Export Comments"
The tool counts the thread and shows a preview. Free tier covers 3 videos a day, no signup.
4. Download the CSV
You'll get a UTF-8 CSV download when it finishes.
Opening the CSV in Excel without breaking emoji
- Open Excel first (blank workbook)
- Data ribbon → From Text/CSV
- Pick your downloaded file
- Set File Origin to
65001: Unicode (UTF-8) - Set Delimiter to
Comma, then Load
Mac Numbers and Google Sheets handle UTF-8 automatically — just double-click.
Useful Excel formulas
Find your most-liked comments
=SORT(A2:K1000, 4, -1) — sorts the whole table by Like Count (column D) descending.
Score comments by engagement
=D2 + (E2 * 3) — weights replies 3× since a reply takes more effort than a like.
Count questions in the comments
=COUNTIF(C2:C1000, "*?*") — a fast proxy for how many viewers are asking something you could answer or turn into content.
Free tier limits
The free tier exports comments from 3 videos per day with no signup. For videos with tens of thousands of comments or bulk work, the $14 3-Day Pass unlocks unlimited posts for 3 days (up to 10,000 comments per post), and the $49 Pro Pass adds AI comment analysis.
Also exporting other platforms? See TikTok comments to Excel and Instagram comments to Excel.