Export and CSV formats
What each Explore export actually downloads: the selection caps and their messages at every level, the file names, the columns in the state, county, metro, city, and EDD files, what a blank cell means, and which screens cannot be exported at all.
Before you start
- Every Explore export works on your current selection, never on the whole dataset or on what the filters happen to show. Selecting nothing and clicking Export produces a message, not a file.
- Exports are plain CSV files that download straight to your browser. They are not saved to your account and do not appear in Reports.
- The Incentives area has its own, different exports. See Incentive reports and exports.
Where the Export buttons are
There are two Export buttons at State, County, and EDD level, and they do exactly the same thing:
- One on the Explore toolbar, at the right-hand end.
- One in the table's own header row, next to the row count.
At Metro level the toolbar button is the only one. At City level the toolbar button is the only one, and it is greyed out until something is selected. The EDD detail panel adds a third Export button that exports whichever district's panel is open.
Selection caps and the messages you will see
| Level | Cap | With nothing selected |
|---|---|---|
| State | 10 states | "Select up to 10 states to export." |
| Metro | 10 metros | "Select up to 10 metros to export." |
| County | 10 counties | "Select up to 10 counties to export." |
| City | 15 cities | Button disabled, tooltip "Select up to 15 cities to export" |
| EDD | 10 districts | "Select up to 10 districts to export." |
Going over the cap at State, Metro, County, or EDD level shows a message naming the current count, for example Export is limited to 10 states — deselect down to 10 (12 selected). Nothing downloads until you are back within the cap.
At City level you do not have to tick anything: if a city's detail panel is open, Export downloads that one city. Ticking cities for comparison exports the ticked set instead.
What each file is called
| Level | File name |
|---|---|
| State | incenti-states.csv |
| County | incenti-counties.csv |
| Metro | incenti-insights-metro-data.csv |
| City | incenti-cities-selection.csv |
| EDD | sleds-edd-priorities.csv, or a name built from the district for a single-district export |
A single-district EDD export is named after that district's state and name,
for example sleds-tx-north-central-texas-council-of-governments.csv.
State, county, and metro columns
State
incenti-states.csv starts with State, Name, and Population,
then carries the eighteen entries offered by the map's metric dropdown: the
six scores (Composite Score, Cost Score, Workforce Score, Risk
Score, Quality of Life Score, Regulatory Score) and twelve metrics
— Population, Population Growth, Median Household Income,
Unemployment Rate, Bachelor's Degree %, Electricity Rate, Tax
Climate Rank, Disaster Count (5yr), Air Quality Index, Economic
Freedom, Health Ranking, and Broadband Access.
The state file is not the full state catalogue. Metrics you can see in the detail panel but not in the map dropdown — natural gas price, workers' comp, health premiums, poverty rate, median age, labor force participation, HS graduation rate, commute time, physicians, violent crime, housing affordability, right-to-work, regulatory burden, and the freight index — are not columns in the export. To get them for a single location, generate a report instead.
County
incenti-counties.csv starts with FIPS, County, State, and
Population, then carries all six scores followed by all twenty-four
county metrics. It is the most complete of the level exports.
Metro
incenti-insights-metro-data.csv starts with Rank, MSA, State,
and Population, then the six scores (Composite, Workforce,
Cost, Risk, Quality, Regulatory), then every metro metric
grouped in catalogue order across Workforce, Cost, Risk, Quality of Life,
and Regulatory (State). Rank is the row's position in the export, which
follows whatever sort the table was using.
City columns
incenti-cities-selection.csv opens with five identity columns — Name,
State, County, GEOID, and Class (Incorporated or CDP) — and
then three blocks of metric columns:
- The fourteen city indicators, under their normal labels.
- City-grain upgrades: unemployment, violent crime, and Zillow home value and asking rent, measured for the place itself.
- County-level columns, each headed
<indicator> (county-level).
Unemployment and violent crime appear twice on purpose — once as a city-grain column and once as a county-level one. A CSV cell cannot carry the County pill the detail panel shows, so the grain is encoded in the column instead. For any one city, exactly one of each pair is filled (or neither).
A blank cell always means the same thing: no value is published for that place. It is never a zero and never a borrowed county figure. See City-level data.
EDD columns
The EDD file has two sections in one CSV.
The first section is one row per district: Region, State, EDA
Region, Counties, Coded Goals, Top Priority, then a percentage
column for each of the sixteen business-priority categories, headed
<category> %.
After a blank line and a line reading Goals & Actions, the second section lists every exported district's individual coded items, one per row: Region, State, Category, Goal, Objective, Action Item.
Goal text loads when you first open a district's panel, so an export may pause briefly to fetch it. If that fetch fails you will see Couldn't load goals for the export — try again. and nothing downloads.
What you cannot export
- A comparison. Neither the side panel nor the full-screen comparison view has an export or print action. Export the same locations from the Explore toolbar to get their numbers, or use Create report to produce a comparative report you can download.
- A filtered list. Export follows the selection, not the filters. To export a filtered set, select the rows you want (up to the cap) and export those.
- Anything at City or EDD level you have not opened or ticked.
- The Incentives screens' record tables through these buttons. Those have their own exports, described in Incentive reports and exports.
Common questions
Q: Why can't I export more than 10 locations at once? A: Export runs on your selection and is capped at 10 at State, Metro, County, and EDD level, and 15 at City level, so nobody can pull the whole dataset in one click. Deselect down to the cap and export again, or run several exports.
Q: Why does the state CSV not include every metric I can see in the table? A: The state export carries the eighteen entries from the map's metric dropdown — the six scores plus twelve metrics. The remaining state metrics appear in the detail panel and in reports but are not columns in that file. County and metro exports do carry their full catalogues.
Q: Some cells in the city CSV are blank. Is the file broken? A: No. A blank city cell means no value is published for that place — usually because the Census withholds estimates for very small populations. Blank is deliberate: a withheld city value is never replaced by its county's figure. The unemployment and violent crime columns appear twice, once at city grain and once at county grain, and only one of each pair is ever filled for a given city.
Q: Can I export or print a comparison? A: Not directly. The comparison views have no export or print action. Export the same locations from the Explore toolbar for the raw numbers, or click Create report with the same selection to produce a comparative report.
Q: The Export button did nothing and a message appeared instead. Why? A: Either nothing is selected, or more locations are selected than the cap allows. The message names the level and the cap, and over-cap messages also name how many you currently have selected.
Q: Do exported files show up in Reports? A: No. A CSV export downloads to your browser and is not recorded anywhere. Only reports generated through Create report appear in the Reports history.
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