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Saving and editing Looks

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Looker Support
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While exploring, you can save your work by saving a Look. This saves all your choices for filters, visualizations, fields, sorting, and so on.

Both Looks and dashboards can be organized in folders (for example, you can have folders named Marketing, Q4 Sales Review, and so on) and later edited as needed.

This page explains how to save, edit, and make other changes to Looks and Look settings that affect what other users can see. For more information about the components on the Look page and interacting with a Look’s data, visit the Viewing Looks in Looker documentation page.

Saving Looks from an Explore

To save a Look from an Explore:

  1. In the upper right of the Explore, select the gear menu.
  2. Choose Save.
  3. Select As a Look to open the Save Look menu.

  1. In the Title field, enter a new title. If you will be saving over an existing Look, leave this field blank.
  2. In the Description field, you can enter a description of the Look. If you will be saving over an existing Look, leave this field blank.
  3. In the Folder field, check whether the current folder is the desired destination. The Folder field shows the name and location of the selected folder, and the right side displays the contents of the selected folder. If you choose a folder in which you are not allowed to save the Look, a warning will be displayed at the bottom of the menu, and the Save & View Look button will be deactivated.
  4. If you want to save to a different folder, navigate to the folder where you want to save your Look. You can navigate to the folder in any of the following ways:
    • In the Folder field, select any parent folders to navigate there.
    • On the left side, select the name of a top-level folder to navigate to it.
    • On the right side, select the name of a subfolder you would like to use or navigate to one of its subfolders.
    • If there are many subfolders, you can enter the subfolder name into the Filter by title field to have the list filtered to just that subfolder.
  5. If you want to save over an existing Look, scroll down or use the Filter by title field to find and select the desired Look. The Look’s title and description (if any) appear in the Title and Description fields.
  6. Save your Look.
    • To save your Look and return to the Explore page, select Save.
    • To save and view your Look, select Save & View Look.

Navigating to folders to see your Looks

You can access your company’s folders by expanding the list of folders in the Folders section of the left navigation panel.

Moving and copying Looks

Once you create and save a Look to a folder, you can move and copy it to other folders to which you have access.

Continue reading for details regarding how to copy or move Looks to other locations within Looker.

Copying Looks

There are two ways to copy a Look:

Copying Looks from the Look page gear menu

To copy a Look from the Look page:

  1. In the upper right of the Look, select the gear menu.
  2. Choose Save.
  3. Select Save As… to open the Save Look menu.

  1. In the Title field, you can leave or edit the title name as desired. If you will be saving over an existing Look, leave this field blank.
  2. In the Description field, you can enter or edit the description of the Look. If you will be saving over an existing Look, leave this field blank.
  3. In the Folder field, check whether the current folder is the desired destination. The Folder field shows the name and location of the selected folder, and the right side displays the contents of the selected folder. If you choose a folder in which you are not allowed to save the Look, a warning will be displayed at the bottom of the menu, and the Save & View Look button will be deactivated.
  4. If you want to save to a different folder, navigate to the folder where you want to save a copy of your Look. You can navigate to the folder in any of the following ways:
    • In Folder, select any parent folders to navigate there.
    • On the left side, select the name of a top-level folder to navigate to it.
    • On the right side, select the name of a subfolder you would like to use or navigate to one of its subfolders.
    • If there are many subfolders, you can enter the subfolder name into Filter by title to have the list filtered to just that subfolder.
  5. If you want to save over an existing Look, scroll down or use the Filter by title field to find and select the desired Look. The Look’s title and description (if any) appear in the Title and Description fields.
  6. Select Save & View Look to save your copied Look.
    • Alternatively, select the X at the top-right of the Save Look menu to return to the original Look without saving the copy.

Copying Looks from a folder

Once you create and save a Look or Looks to a folder, you can move and copy one individual Look or more than one Look in bulk to other folders to which you have access. You can view the detailed steps for moving and copying Looks on the Organizing and managing access to content documentation page.

Moving Looks

Currently, you can only move Looks from a folder. You can move Looks individually or in bulk to other folders to which you have access. You can view the detailed steps for moving Looks on the Organizing and managing access to content documentation page.

Editing Looks

After creating a Look, you can edit its underlying query, edit its name, and decide if it should automatically run when loaded. If you have permission to do so, you can also give access to the Look through publicly accessible URLs, described in more detail on the Public sharing, importing, and embedding of Looks documentation page.

Editing a Look’s source query

You can edit a saved Look’s fields, filters, visualizations, sorting, and so on by following these steps while on the Look’s page:

  1. In the saved Look, select Edit. This opens the Edit Look page.

  1. On the Edit Look page, make any changes you want to the Look’s fields, filters, visualization, and so on. You can make changes from both the field picker and the Filters panel, as necessary. In the preceding example, Users Count was added to the Explore query.
    • For more information regarding making changes to an Explore query, see the Exploring data in Looker documentation page.
  2. After you make the desired changes, select the Run button to update the Look.
  3. When the Look is finished running, the Save button will become enabled. Select Save to save your changes.

Renaming a Look

There are two ways to rename an existing Look, including:

Renaming a Look from a Look’s page

  1. In the saved Look, select Edit.

  1. Input the desired name in the title section on the Edit Look page
  2. Select Save to save your changes.

Renaming a Look from a folder

Whether viewing Looks in a folder with list view or grid view, you can rename an existing Look from a folder in the following way:

  1. Click the Look’s three-dot menu icon.
  2. Select Rename.

  1. Change the title as desired.
  2. Click OK.

Turning off automatic Run on Load

You can prevent a Look from automatically loading its data when a user opens it by disabling the Run on Load option, which is enabled by default. This can be useful if you want to give the user a chance to select their filters before a Look’s query runs. If you do choose to prevent the Look from running automatically, the user will see an empty visualization when they initially view the Look:

There are two ways to adjust the Run on Load option:

Disabling automatic Run on Load from the Look page gear menu

To disable automatic Run on Load from the Look page gear menu:

  1. In the upper right of the Explore, select the gear menu.
  2. Select Edit Settings.

  1. Select the Run on Load switch to disable automatic Run on Load.
  2. Select Save.

You can also follow the preceding instructions to enable automatic Run on Load if it is disabled.

Disabling automatic Run on Load from a folder

Whether viewing Looks in a folder with list view or grid view, you can disable a Look’s automatic Run on Load setting from a folder in the following way:

  1. Click the Look’s three-dot menu icon.
  2. Select Edit Settings.

  1. Select the Run on Load switch to disable automatic Run on Load.
  2. Select Save.

You can also follow the preceding instructions to enable automatic Run on Load if it is disabled.

Editing a Look’s description

A Look’s description appears below the Look’s name in folders that are set to list view, or when you hover over the Look’s thumbnail in a folder that is set to grid view.

If your admin has set your homepage to the pre-built Looker homepage, the description is also displayed when you hover over the Look’s thumbnail on your homepage.

You can add or edit a Look’s description directly from the Look itself:

  1. Open the Look and click the description’s Edit link in the Details panel to access the Description text box.

  1. Add or edit the text for the description, as desired.
  2. Click Save to save the updated description or Cancel to close the Description text box without saving.

Deleting Looks

You can delete a Look or Looks in one of two ways:

To delete a Look using the gear menu:

  1. Select the gear icon to open the menu options.
  2. Select Move to trash.
  3. Click OK in the confirmation box to delete the Look.

If you delete a Look that is the source for a dashboard tile, the dashboard’s Look-linked tile returns an Element not found error.

If you accidentally delete a Look, your Looker admin might be able to recover it for you. Looker stores deleted content in the trash until your Looker admin team empties the trash as part of their maintenance process.

Conclusion

Looks let you save the results of your exploration to view later or add to dashboards.

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