Copy reports and exploration across GA4 properties

Overview:

Many data driven marketers must be facing challenges to copy reports across multiple properties in Google Analytics with utmost data accuracy and efficiency! GA4 introduced new feature "Copy Reports & Explorations Across GA4 Properties".

Users who faced challenges in manually replicating reports across multiple properties, leading to inconsistency in data analysis. With this feature, GA4 enables seamless duplication of reports, ensuring consistent data analysis, reduced manual effort, and improved workflow efficiency across different properties.

What is “Copy reports and exploration across GA4 properties” Feature:

GA4 now allows us to copy the setup of a custom report or exploration from one property to other properties where we have permission to create reports or explorations.

This helps us to avoid any configuration issues, reduces manual efforts to create reports, and leverages us to analyze and get insights from data.

Key benefits:

• Time-Saving – Eliminates the need to manually recreate reports in different GA4 properties.
• Consistency – Ensures uniform reporting structure across multiple properties.
• Error Reduction – Minimizes mistakes that can occur when manually recreating complex reports.
• Enhanced Data Accessibility – Ensures key insights remain available across different accounts.

What types of  reports and explorations we can copy to properties:

1. A detailed custom report.
2. A report specifically created from the exploration section

How to transfer detailed custom report and exploration reports to another GA4 property:

1. Detailed report

• Open Reports section

• Click on the Library section

• In the Reports section, select the custom detailed report and click on the “Copy Across Properties” option.

• A pop-up window will appear displaying a list of account properties. Choose the desired property and click on "Copy to Property" to complete the process.

Note: Currently, we can only copy custom detail reports across the property. The default detailed reports in Analytics cannot be copied.

2. Exploration report

• Click on Explore section

• Select any custom report and click on the “Copy Across Properties” option.

• A pop-up window will appear displaying a list of account properties. Choose the desired property and click on "Copy to Property" to complete the process.

Note: If a custom report includes custom dimensions, metrics, audiences, or other customizations, a warning sign will appear in the "Copy across properties" option, as shown in the image below.

To verify if the report has been successfully copied to another account, GA4 assigns different statuses.

When we copy custom or exploration report, we will get the below status codes:

Success: A custom detailed or exploration report was copied successfully.

Warning: The custom detail report or exploration was copied successfully, but some custom settings were not included.

The following customizations cannot be copied to the new property:

• Audiences
• Calculated metrics
• Custom channel groupings
• Custom dimensions
• Custom metrics
• Saved comparisons
• Saved segments

To make sure the report works properly in the new property, you’ll need to update these settings manually.

Note: When copying a report with custom dimensions or metrics, "archived dimension" or "archived metric" appears. We need to check the original GA4 property and update it accordingly.

Failure: The custom detailed report or exploration couldn't be copied due to one of the following reasons:

• Quota Limit Reached:

• Each property allows up to 150 custom reports.
• You can create up to 200 individual explorations per user/property.
• A property can have up to 500 shared explorations.

• Insufficient Permissions:

• You may not have the required role to copy the custom report or exploration.
• Your role in the selected property may have changed while you were copying the report.

Conclusion:

The "Copy reports and explorations across GA4 properties" feature enhances efficiency by enabling seamless duplication of reports. However, users must carefully review copied reports for archived dimensions or metrics and ensure proper configuration in the new property. By leveraging this feature effectively, teams can streamline workflows and improve data analysis without recreating reports from scratch.