Google announced that Universal Analytics, the current version of its analytics tool, will be discontinued as of July 1, 2023. This means everyone must migrate to the new version, called Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

The new version includes several important changes, incorporating new ways to measure and track user data. For this reason, the information in the new tool is not compatible with the previous data, and creating a GA4 property starts with the data from scratch.

What will happen to all the historical information I collected earlier? According to what was published by the company, it will be possible to continue accessing the old properties of Universal Analytics to review the historical information for "at least 6 months" after July 1, 2023. However, that access will also be cut after, for which the company notes that "it is very important that you export your historical reports during this time."

How can I export historical data from Google Analytics?

Universal Analytics provides the option to download reports in formats such as CSV, Excel, Google spreadsheets, PDF, and others. To do so, we must enter the report that we are interested in obtaining, select the period that we want to download and click on Export on the top right-hand side.

This method is a bit tedious because it involves entering each report one by one that we are interested in preserving to download. Google seems to recognize that this can be a problem for some users, so it notes that "our intention is to provide more guidance on data export as we get closer to the date Universal Analytics is no longer available."