# How to Share a Looker Studio Report — Link Sharing, Credentials and Scheduled Delivery

Canonical: https://commareports.com/share-looker-studio-report
Published: 2026-09-04

> Looker Studio sharing depends on whether the data source uses owner or viewer credentials, and scheduled delivery lands as a flat PDF email. What each setting really does, plus the digest pattern that keeps one commentable URL.

# How to share a Looker Studio report

Looker Studio is the easiest BI tool in the world to share and the easiest one
to share wrongly, because the sharing control everyone touches is not the one
that determines what a reader can see.

## The setting that actually matters

Every data source in a Looker Studio report is configured with either **owner
credentials** or **viewer credentials**.

**Viewer credentials** runs each query as the person looking at the report. A
reader who has no grant on the BigQuery dataset, the Analytics property, or
the Sheet sees an error where the chart should be. This is the safe default
and the reason for most "I shared it but they see nothing" tickets.

**Owner credentials** runs every query as you. Anyone who can open the report
sees the data, whether or not they could ever query the source themselves.
This is what makes a report shareable — and it means the sharing dialog is now
the only thing standing between your warehouse and the recipient list.

Combine owner credentials with "anyone with the link can view" and you have
published. That is sometimes exactly right: a public marketing dashboard, a
community metrics page. When it is not right, it is a data incident that looks
like a convenience feature.

## What Looker Studio gives you beyond that

**Named sharing.** Per-person or per-Google-Group access, exactly like a Doc.
Good, and it requires the reader to have a Google identity, which not every
client does.

**Scheduled email delivery.** A PDF of the report on a cron. Dependable, and
terminal — the recipient replies into a mailbox, the discussion detaches from
the chart, and a person who joins in month four has no way to read back.

**Embedding.** An iframe, subject to the same credentials and link settings.
Public embed means public data.

## The gap

The recurring requirement is narrow and none of the above covers it: a named
group, some without Google accounts, needs this month's figures at a link,
with the ability to question one number and find that answer again later.

## The digest pattern

Pull the numbers from the source rather than the report, render one
self-contained HTML page, publish it at a stable URL, and put anchored
comments on it.

Going to the source is easier than it sounds, because Looker Studio is a
presentation layer over things that already have APIs — BigQuery, GA4, Search
Console, Sheets, Ads. A short script queries the same tables the report reads
and writes plain HTML: inline CSS, real `<table>` markup, nothing fetched at
view time.

```bash
python3 scripts/marketing_digest.py > digest.html

curl -fsS -X PATCH "https://commareports.com/api/v1/reports/$REPORT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COMMA_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "$(jq -n --rawfile html digest.html \
        --arg title "Acquisition — $(date +%B\ %Y)" '{title: $title, html: $html}')"
```

One report id, PATCHed monthly. If you would rather not own the cron, a
[routine](/features/routines) runs the same job on a schedule and posts the
result.

## What changes for the reader

No Google account, no PDF attachment, no credentials puzzle. Access is a
setting on the report — [private, team, domain-gated or link](/docs/sharing)
— so "anyone at client-co.com" is one choice rather than a list of invitations.

And the conversation attaches. Somebody highlights the paid-search row and
pins "spend paused on the 12th, this is nine days not thirty." The thread
survives every subsequent revision, so next quarter's reader gets the caveat
along with the number instead of asking about it again.

## When to just use Looker Studio

If your readers have Google accounts and the value is in changing the date
range and slicing by channel, share the report and use viewer credentials so
the data grants stay honest. Live wins for readers who can get in. The digest
pattern is for the readers who cannot, and for the months you want a dated,
commentable record rather than a live surface that silently changes underneath
last week's conversation.

## Try it

Comma is free — unlimited reports, unlimited commenters, unlimited revision
history.

**[Create your first report →](https://commareports.com/)**

### Related

- [Weekly analytics digest](/features/routines/weekly-analytics-digest)
- [Share a Power BI report](/share-power-bi-report)
- [Share an HTML report with a client](/share-html-file-with-client)