Can I switch my Google Analytics property from GA4 to UA?

Question

For some reason PowerBI does not accept GA4 as a connection, so my data is stuck in GA4. PowerBI does support Universal Analytics (UA), but I cannot find a way to convert my GA property.

Is there a way to do this or should I start over again and create a new property as UA?

Answer 1

First off as everyone says you cant change the type of your Google analytics account if it was created as UA then its UA if it was created as GA4 then its GA4. There is also no way to exxport data.

Now lets look at the underlying cause of your problem Google analytics connector in Power BI Desktop rely on the Google Analytics Core Reporting API this API is used to extract data from Google Analytics UA accounts. There is a very big difference between the underlying data structure of a UA account and a GA4 account they are not completable in any way shape or form.

Thats why the Google analytics team is currently developing the Google analytics data api This api has the ability to connect to Google analytics GA4 accounts and extract data. At the time this post was created Power BI Google Analytics The Google analytics data api had just been released and was still in alpha test phase as you can see from the change log this API is still under development. I haven't checked but it looks like it may even be out of beta now. (TBH I am not really sure of the exact date it was released publicly as I have been in the alpha test group for a long time.)

However that being said a lot of the client libraries used by this api are still under development as well Google .Net Client library for Google Analytics Data API for example is still in beta. At the time that post was written i am almost 100% sure the client library had not been released.

This means that any power bi connector is probably not going to be released until both the API and the client library are considered stable. I know the team is working hard on the API and I Haven't seen any breaking changes in a very long time.

So to the user who added a bounty to this looking for an updated answer.

IMO I don't think you have long to wait before everything is stable enough for applications like the Power BI to start appearing that support GA4. That is assuming that someone creates one.

Answer 2

PowerBI currently doesn't support GA4 as a destination because the underlying api is not product ready yet. See the response in the microsoft power BI community here: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Power-BI-Google-Analytics/td-p/1679530

For information about the api's and their current state: This is a link to the api documentation the plugin is using (for universal analytics): https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v4

This is a link to the api documentation of GA4 (which is still in beta): https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/data/v1

Regarding a solution for your issue:

• In GA4 is it possible to export data to big query, which can be processed there and imported to PowerBI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-connect-bigquery
• The export only works from the moment you enable it, so it is not possible to access the data this way before the enablement.
• Second option is using data studio to connect to your GA4 data to be able to access the data you have measured before.

Answer 3

You can't covert GA4 to UA (or UA to GA4).

In your case you can create a new UA Property and start to track in it: