Filtering and exporting Open Data

Some of our datasets are too large to open in Excel or Google Sheets, both of which have limits on the size of datasets they can handle. And extremely large datasets, like ones with millions of rows, can be overwhelming to begin to work with since there is so much information in them.

Filtering a subset of the data makes it easier to focus on what you care about. Plus it will take less of your computer’s resources, which will make your work faster.

But if you are newer to using data, it isn’t clear that this is even possible from the about page. Especially since the only button you may think to use, export button, will just automatically download the entire dataset. There are two ways you can filter the data, but we are going to focus on the action menu since it can let you do more specific filters.

Note: Videos on this page demonstrate the steps described in the text. They have no sound.

At the top right of your screen you will see the actions button. Once you click it, it may not be clear even from here where to go next. Select query data from the menu, because filtering is included in the “and more” part of the “group, aggregate, and more” description.

Before we start filtering the data, it’s a good idea to scroll around and get familiar with the dataset. What are the columns that seem useful to you? Which cells seem like they have the information you want to surface?

It’s also always a good idea to note how many total rows the dataset has so you can see how much you have filtered out once you start working with it.

Below the data you will see a box titled filters. This is where the magic happens! Here, you can select which columns and values you’d like to filter the dataset by.

Nothing you do here will affect the actual data! Feel free to play, there is no way to accidentally delete anything off of Open Data. And you can always undo your filter and start over.

To start filtering, you first need to pick which column you want to focus on. You can either select the column from the drop-down list or type the name as it appears in the dataset.

Then, select how you want to filter it. Do you only want to see certain values? A certain date range?

Once you add one filter, you can either add an additional column you want to filter by or apply the filter to see your results.

Depending on the size of the original dataset, it can take some time for your filters to be applied. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see your changes right away!

In this example, we filtered the 311 service requests dataset to only see requests from Council District 04, excluding requests for the NYPD, from October 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025. This has taken the dataset from 19,592,268 rows down to 10,682!

If you’re happy with your results, you can continue to the next step: exporting the data. But maybe you don't need all of the columns in the dataset. In that case you can remove columns from your view using the column manager.

On the menu on the left of the screen there is an icon that looks like three bars. This is the column manager. Here, you can uncheck any columns that aren't relevant to you to make your dataset even more compact. In this example we unchecked a number of the location columns, bringing the dataset from 44 columns to 30.

Now that you've tailored the dataset to your needs, it’s time to take it off of Open Data and put it onto your computer to work with.

On the top right, above the preview of the data, you will see an export button. This opens a pop-up where you can pick what file format you would like to download your data as. If you’re unsure what you need, we recommend a CSV since it can be opened in any program. Hit download, and you've got open data!