How to download data

Statistics.gov.scot offers a variety of ways to download and share data. This guide tells you how to:

  • Download an entire dataset
  • Download data from a table
  • Download the contents of a data cart

This guide does not explore accessing data via APIs (application programming interfaces). We'll be publishing a guide about using the API shortly, which will provide more information about machine readable data.

Download an entire Dataset

Watch the video: How to Download a Dataset as CSV.

Once you've found the dataset you're interested in, the dataset page has a link at the bottom of the page which will allow you to download the entire dataset. For example:

An entire dataset download includes all available areas, all time periods, and all other dimensions and could result in a very large file.

You can download the entire dataset in:

  • CSV format: A comma separated values file, which can be opened in many applications, such as Excel, LibreOffice, or Google Spreadsheets. The file has one row per observation, and each dimension in a separate column. Also known as the Tidy Data format.
  • N-triples format: This format is for technical users and software developers. N-triples is a serialisation of RDF and allows anyone to load the dataset into another RDF database (also known as a triple-store or graph database).

For our largest datasets, a download won’t be available but you can filter the data to a table view and download the selected subset of data as CSV. Alternatively, you can contact us at statistics.enquiries@gov.scot and we will send you the full dataset.

Download data from a table

Watch the video: How to Download a Table of Data.

Once you’ve filtered a dataset to generate a table, you should see something like this.

Below the data table, and the list of relevant dimensions and reference areas, there is a download section:

Here, we can choose to download the data that we have in the table above, in CSV format by clicking on the CSV button next to ‘This slice, as a spreadsheet’.

Downloading the contents of a Data Cart

Once you've made and saved a data cart, you can download its contents as CSV.

Summary

Download an entire dataset

  • Find the dataset you want
  • Scroll down the page, past the dimensions
  • Click on the button to download the entire dataset

Download data from a table

  • Get to a table view of the data
  • Scroll down, past the snapshot of the spreadsheet and the table of dimensions
  • Click on the blue csv download button

Download the contents of a data cart

To continue exploring our datasets go to statistics.gov.scot

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