Wouldn’t it be nice if Twitter had an Export button? You search for a trending #hashtag, anold tweet or your brand name, and all the matching tweets would get saved in an Excel or Google spreadsheet. And the archive would update itself as new tweets are added to Twitter.
Well, Twitter is unlikely to provide an option to save search results directly but here’s a simple do-it-yourself solution that takes 5-minutes to implement and it will capture all tweets matching your search term(s) and hashtags in a Google Spreadsheet automatically. You can use the tool to monitor tweets around any hashtag, learn what people are saying about your brand, track popular search terms and more.

The idea is simple. This Google Spreadsheet connects to Twitter through a Google Script and imports all the search results into the sheet. It will make this connection to Twitter every few minutes in the background and fetches any new tweets, if available.

Save Tweets Forever in a Spreadsheet

The Twitter Archiver is available in two editions – free and premium. The premium edition allows you to monitor multiple search terms and hashtags in the same Google sheet. It is significantly faster at fetching tweets, it saves location information (if available) and can even pull old tweets that have been posted in the previous 6-9 days.

FeaturesFreePremium
Automatically archive all new (incoming) tweetsYesYes
Support for advanced Twitter search operators likemin_retweetsYesYes
Capture old tweets sent in the last 6-9 daysNoYes
Show seo-tagged tweets on a Google MapNoYes
Tweet Archiving speedNormalFast
Save tweets for multiple search terms and hashtags in a single spreadsheetNoYes
Installation Manual (PDF) includedNoYes
Support optionsNoneEmail
Choose Twitter Archiver editionForever FreePremium
Platinum includes all features of Premium plus one-on-one support over Skype, Google Hangouts and remote screen sharingPlatinum
You may make payments through PayPal or your credit and debit cards. This is a one-time feeand refunds can be requested within 12 hours of purchase
Archive Tweets Permanently

How to Use Twitter Archiver – Free Edition


  1. Click here to copy the Twitter Archiver sheet into your Google Drive.
  2. Change the name of the worksheet (not the Google Spreadsheet) to an hashtag or a search phrase that you wish to monitor. For instance, you can set the sheet name as #MayThe4thBeWithYou for saving Star Wars related tweets.
  3. Go to apps.twitter.com and create a new Twitter app. Give your Twitter app a name, description, put anything in the website field and sethttps://script.google.com/macros/ as the Callback URL. Save the settings, then switch to the Keys & Access Tokens tab and make a note of the Twitter Consumer Key and Secret API keys.
  4. Switch to the Google spreadsheet and choose Authorize from theTwitter Archiver menu. Enter the Twitter consumer keys and save the configuration. Next click theAuthorize Twitter button to connect the Spreadsheet to your Twitter App.
That’s it. The tweets will begin appearing your Google Sheets within 5-10 minutes.
In addition to tweets, the Twitter Archiver app also imports other data like the tweet’s retweet & favorite count and the tweeter’s friend & followers count. This data will help you filter out the spam Twitter users or figure out the most influential tweets from the imported data.
The Twitter Archiver sheet runs in the background and monitors Twitter every few minutes for new tweets. If you would like to stop the tracker, open the Twitter Archiver menu and choose Stop Tracker as shown in the screencast video.