Keepeek - Optimize Your CSV/Excel Exports: Best Practices

This article aims to provide best practices for using CSV/Excel exports without impacting back-office performance, and to help you obtain data that is ready to use.

First of all, you should know that an EXCEL export can contain a maximum of 10,000 media items (Excel limitation). For CSV exports, users are also limited to 10,000 media items, but administrators can select up to 50,000 media items for CSV exports.

Limit the Number of Fields Selected in the Report

To get started properly, it is important to limit the number of fields included in CSV/Excel reports.
The available fields for the report can be found in Settings → Excel and CSV Report, under the Extraction section (see below).

Next, select the relevant report or create a new one using the Create New Report button (see below).

Finally, add the desired fields using the "Add Field" button in the "Report Fields" tab (see below).

Here’s a more detailed list of key points to know before creating a report:

• Limit the number of selected fields in the reports
  The more fields you select when building your report, the longer the export will take.

• Limit the number of fields using thumbnails in Excel reports
  Using fields that include thumbnails significantly increases the export generation time (up to 5x longer). If you must use such fields, it’s best to limit it to just one.

• Limit the number of fields using URLs (pre-generated formats) in CSV reports
  Using fields with URLs to pre-generated formats drastically increases export time (up to 10x). If you need to include such fields, limit to one.
  Additionally, you must first request that Keepeek Support enables this type of field usage.

Performing a CSV/Excel Export: Use Cases and Generation Times

If you're unsure how to start generating CSV/Excel exports, we recommend checking the article Generating an Excel or CSV Report.

Below are examples of CSV/Excel report configurations, along with estimated export generation times. These times may vary depending on our server load and the number of selected media.

1. CSV report with 2 technical fields linked to the item, 1 field from the item sheet, for 1400 media 

Export time: 20 seconds

   2. Same report as above, with the same number of media items, but with an added field linked to a pre-generated format (CSV only)

Export time: ~1 minute 30 seconds

   3. Same report as case 1, but for 7000 media 
Export time: ~1 minutes

   4. Same report as case 2, but for 7000 media 
Export time: ~21 minutes

These tests clearly show that adding just one field linked to a pre-generated format multiplies CSV export time by 10.

   5. Excel report with 3 technical fields linked to the item, for 1400 media

Export time: 20 seconds

   6. Same Excel report, but for 7000 media

Export time: ~1 minutes

This confirms that the number of selected media items affects export generation time.

   7. Excel report with 3 technical fields + 1 thumbnail field, for 1400 media items

 Export time: ~1 minutes

    8. Same report as above, but for 7000 media

 Export time: ~5 minutes

    9. Final Example: Heavy CSV Report

 For the last report example, we selected about ten fields, including two URL fields linked to pre-generated formats, and exported 10,000 media items.

  Export time: ~28 minutes

 This clearly demonstrates that adding many fields to the report and selecting a large number of media items has a significant impact on export generation time.
It is often better, especially when including many fields, to break the export into batches — for example, exporting 5,000 media items at a time.