Use the Google Cloud console

The Google Cloud console provides a graphical interface that you can use to create and manage BigQuery resources and run SQL queries.

To try BigQuery in the Google Cloud console, see the quickstart Query a public dataset with the Google Cloud console.

Note: The default experience is the Preview release of the Google Cloud console. This document describes the Preview experience. During the Preview stage, you can go to the General Availability release of the Google Cloud console by clicking Hide preview features.

Before you begin

1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

3. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   Go to project selector

4. Enable the BigQuery API.

   Enable the API

   For new projects, the BigQuery API is automatically enabled.

5. Optional: Enable billing for the project. If you don't want to enable billing or provide a credit card, the steps in this document still work. BigQuery provides you a sandbox to perform the steps. For more information, see Enable the BigQuery sandbox.
   Note: If your project has a billing account and you want to use the BigQuery sandbox, then disable billing for your project.

Open BigQuery in the Google Cloud console

1. Go to the Google Cloud console.

   Go to the Google Cloud console

2. In the Google Cloud console toolbar, click Navigation menu.

3. In the Analytics section, click BigQuery.

You can also open the BigQuery page by entering the following URL in your browser:

https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery

BigQuery opens in your most recently accessed project.

To simplify navigation, you can add (or pin) BigQuery as a top product in the navigation menu:

1. In the Google Cloud console navigation menu, hold the pointer over BigQuery.

2. Click Pin.

Overview of the BigQuery page

The BigQuery page has three main sections:

• The BigQuery navigation menu
• The Explorer pane
• The details pane

Navigation menu

In the BigQuery navigation menu, you can select the following analysis, migration, and administration options:

• SQL workspace, which displays your datasets, tables, views, and other BigQuery resources. In this workspace, you can create and run queries, work with tables and views, see your BigQuery job history, and perform other common BigQuery tasks.

• Data transfers, which opens the BigQuery Data Transfer API page.

• Scheduled queries, which displays your scheduled queries.

• Data QnA, which opens the Data QnA page, where you can get answers to analytical queries through a natural language interface.

• Analytics Hub, which displays all of the data exchanges that you can access in your Cloud project.

• SQL translation, which lets you convert your Teradata SQL queries so that they work in BigQuery.

• Capacity Management, which displays slot commitments, reservations, and reservation assignments.

• BI Engine, which opens the BI Engine page.

You can control how the BigQuery navigation menu is displayed:

• To collapse the navigation menu so that only the icons are visible, click Hide BigQuery navigation menu.

• To temporarily expand the menu when it's collapsed, hold the pointer over the menu.

• To expand the menu so that the labels stay visible, click Show BigQuery navigation menu.

Explorer pane

The Explorer pane is visible when you select SQL workspace in the navigation menu. This pane lists current Cloud projects and any pinned projects.

To view the resources in your projects and datasets, do the following:

• To view the datasets that you have access to in a project, expand the project.

• To view tables, views, and functions in a dataset, expand the dataset.

You can also use the search box to search for resources by name (project, dataset, table, or view name) or by label within your current and pinned projects. The search box finds the resources that directly match, or contain matches, to your search query.

You can control how the Explorer pane is displayed:

• To collapse the Explorer pane, click the icon.

• To expand the Explorer pane, click the icon.

Details pane

The details pane shows information about your BigQuery resources. When you select a dataset, table, view, or other resource in the Explorer pane, a new tab is displayed. On these tabs, you can view information about the resource, or you can create tables and views, modify table schemas, export data, and perform other actions.

Work with projects

All of the work that you perform in BigQuery is done within a Cloud project. You can see the project name on the Google Cloud console toolbar:

Any costs that you incur for using BigQuery are charged to the billing account that's attached to the project. For more information, see BigQuery pricing.

Switch to a project

To switch to a Cloud project in the Google Cloud console, follow these steps:

1. On the Google Cloud console toolbar, click the name of your project.

2. In the projects dialog, click the name of the project that you want to switch to.

   This selection becomes your active project.

Pin a project

You can pin a Cloud project to the Explorer pane in two ways:

• You can open a project and then pin it:

  1. Switch to the project that you want to pin.

  2. In the Explorer pane, hold the pointer over the name of the project that you want to pin, and then click Click to pin.

• You can select a project from a list and then pin the project:

  1. In the Explorer pane, click Add data.

  2. Select Pin a project, and then select Search for project.

  3. In the dialog, click the name of the project that you want to pin.

Remove a project

To remove a project from the Explorer pane, click the name of the project, and then click Click to unpin.

Display resources

The Explorer pane lists datasets that you can browse in your current project or any projects that you pinned.

• To display the datasets in a project, click Expand node for that project.
• To display the tables, views, and functions in a dataset, click the dataset.

To display information about a resource in a project or dataset, click the name of the resource in the Explorer pane and view the details pane. The set of available actions depends on the resource. For example, the following image shows the tab for a table:

Run a query

1. In the details pane, click Compose new query.
2. In the query editor, enter a SQL query.
3. Click Run.

For more information about how to run queries, see Running interactive queries.

Work with tabs

You can control how you work with tabs in the details pane.

Split two tabs

Whenever you select a resource or click Compose new query in the details pane, a new tab opens. If more than one tab is open, you can split the tabs into two panes and view them side by side.

To split tabs into two panes, follow these steps:

1. Next to the tab name, click Open menu.

2. Select one of the following options:

   • To place the selected tab in the left pane, select Split tab to left.
   • To place the selected tab in the right pane, select Split tab to right.
   Note: If only one tab is open, these menu options are unavailable.

To unsplit the tabs, select Open menu on one of the open tabs, and then select Move tab to left pane or Move tab to right pane.

To split tabs when querying tables, follow these steps:

1. In the Explorer menu, click the table that you want to query.

2. Click Query, and then click In new tab or In split tab:

   

3. Click the field name that you want to query:

   

The following image shows the details pane with two open tabs. One tab has a SQL query, and the other tab shows details about a table.

Move a tab

To move a tab from one pane to the other pane, follow these steps:

1. Next to the tab name, click Open menu.

2. Select Move tab to right pane or Move tab to left pane (whichever option is available).

Close a tab

To close all tabs except for one, follow these steps:

1. Next to the tab name, click Open menu.

2. Select Close other tabs.

View personal and project history

You can view job histories in the footer of the details pane:

• To view details of your own jobs, click Personal history.

• To view details of recent jobs in your project, click Project history.

To see the details of a job or to open the query in an editor, do the following:

1. In the Actions column for a job or query, click Actions.

2. Select Show job details or Open query in editor.

The job histories include all load, export, copy, and query jobs that you submitted in the past six months (up to 1,000 entries). The limit of 1,000 jobs is cumulative across all job types.

Keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the Google Cloud console:

Key combination (Windows/Linux)	Key combination (macOS)	Action
Ctrl+Enter	Cmd+Enter	Run current query
Tab	Tab	Autocomplete current word
Ctrl	Cmd	Highlight table names
Ctrl+E	Cmd+E	Run query from selection
Ctrl+/	Cmd+/	Comment current or selected lines

Examples

You can find Google Cloud console examples throughout the how-to guides section of the BigQuery documentation.

To see examples of loading data and querying data using the Google Cloud console, see the Load and query data with the Google Cloud console.

What's next

• To learn about querying a public dataset and using the BigQuery sandbox, see Query a public dataset with the Google Cloud console.