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Notebook outputs and results

After you attach a notebook to a cluster and run one or more cells, your notebook has state and displays outputs. This section describes how to manage notebook state and outputs.

Clear notebooks state and outputs​

To clear the notebook state and outputs, select one of the Clear options at the bottom of the Run menu.

Menu option

Description

Clear all cell outputs

Clears the cell outputs. This is useful if you share the notebook and want to avoid including any results.

Clear state

Clears the notebook state, including function and variable definitions, data, and imported libraries.

Clear state and outputs

Clears cell outputs and the notebook state.

Clear state and run all

Clears the notebook state and starts a new run.

Results table​

When a cell is run, results are shown in a results table. With the results table, you can do the following:

  • Copy a column or other subset of tabular results data to the clipboard.
  • Do a text search over the results table.
  • Sort and filter data.
  • Navigate between table cells using the keyboard arrow keys.
  • Select part of a column name or cell value by double-clicking and dragging to select the desired text.
  • Use the column explorer to search, show or hide, pin, and rearrange columns.

Notebook results table

To view limits on the results table, see Notebook results table limits.

Select data​

To select data in the results table, do any of the following.

  • Copy the data or a subset of the data to the clipboard.
  • Click a column or row header.
  • Click in the upper-left cell of the table to select the entire table.
  • Drag your cursor across any set of cells to select them.

To open a side panel displaying selection information, click the panel icon panel icon icon in the upper-right corner, next to the Search box.

location of panel icon

Copy data to clipboard​

To copy the results table in CSV format to the clipboard, click the downward arrow next to the table title tab, then click Copy results to clipboard.

Copy results table to the clipboard.

Alternatively, click the box in the table's top left to select the full table, and then right-click and select Copy from the drop-down menu.

There are several ways to copy selected data:

  • Press Cmd + C on MacOS or Ctrl + C on Windows to copy the results to the clipboard in CSV format.
  • Right-click and select Copy to copy the results to the clipboard in CSV format.
  • Right click and select Copy as to copy the selected data in CSV, TSV, or Markdown format.

Copy selected data to the clipboard.

Sort results​

To sort the results table by the values in a column, hover your cursor over the column name. An icon containing the column name appears at the right of the cell. Click the arrow to sort the column.

how to sort a column

To sort by multiple columns, hold down the Shift key as you click the sort arrow for the columns.

Sorting follows natural sort order by default. To enforce a lexicographical sort order, use ORDER BY in SQL or the respective SORT functions available in your environment.

Filter results​

There are several ways to create a filter:

  • Click filter icon at the upper-right of the cell results. In the dialog that appears, select the column to filter on and the filter rule and value to apply. For example:

    filter example

  • To add another filter, click add filter button.

  • To temporarily enable or disable a filter, toggle the Enabled/Disabled button in the dialog. To delete a filter, click the X next to the filter name delete filter X.

  • To filter by a specific value, right-click on a cell with that value and select Filter by this value from the drop-down menu.

    specific value

  • To filter on a specific column, use the kebab menu in the column name:

    filter kebab menu

By default, filters are applied only to the results shown in the results table. If the data returned is truncated (for example, when a query returns more than 10,000 rows or the dataset is larger than 2MB), the filter is applied only to the returned rows. A note in the top right of the table indicates that the filter was applied to truncated data.

You can choose to filter the full dataset instead. Click Truncated data, then choose Full dataset. Depending on the size of the dataset, it may take a long time for the filter to apply.

Apply filters to the full dataset.

Explore columns​

To facilitate working with tables that have many columns, you can use the column explorer. To open the column explorer, click the column icon (Column icon.) in the top right of a results table.

The column explorer allows you to:

  • Search for columns: Type in the search bar to filter the list of columns. Click on a column in the explorer to navigate to it within the results table.
  • Show or hide columns: Use the checkboxes to control column visibility. The checkbox at the top toggles the visibility of all columns at once. Individual columns can be shown or hidden using the checkboxes next to their names.
  • Pin columns: Hover over a column name to reveal a pin icon. Click the pin icon to pin the column. Pinned columns remain visible as you scroll horizontally through the results table.
  • Rearrange columns: Click and hold the drag icon (Drag icon.) to the right of a column’s name, then drag and drop the column to its new desired position. This reorders the columns in the results table.

Use the column explorer to search, show or hide, pin, and rearrange columns.

Format columns​

Column headers indicate the data type of the column. For example, indicator for integer type column indicates integer data type. Hover over the indicator to see the data type.

You can format columns in results tables as types like Currency, Percentage, URL and more, with control over decimal places for clearer tables.

Format columns from the kebab menu in the column name.

format column kebab menu

Download results​

By default, downloading results is enabled. To toggle this setting, see Manage the ability to download results from notebooks.

You can download a cell result that contains tabular output to your local machine. Click the downward pointing arrow next to the tab title. The menu options depend on the number of rows in the result and the Databricks Runtime version. Downloaded results are saved on your local machine as a CSV file with a name corresponding to your notebook name.

Download cell results.

For notebooks connected to SQL warehouses or serverless compute, you can also download the results as an Excel file.

Download all rows to an Excel file.

Explore SQL cell results​

In a Databricks notebook, results from a SQL language cell are automatically available as a DataFrame assigned to the variable _sqldf. You can use the _sqldf variable to refer to the previous SQL output in subsequent Python and SQL cells. For details, see Explore SQL cell results.

View multiple outputs per cell​

Python notebooks and %python cells in non-Python notebooks support multiple outputs per cell. For example, the output of the following code includes both the plot and the table:

Python
import pandas as pd
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris

data = load_iris()
iris = pd.DataFrame(data=data.data, columns=data.feature_names)
ax = iris.plot()
print("plot")
display(ax)
print("data")
display(iris)

Resize outputs​

Resize cell outputs by dragging the bottom right corner of the table or visualization.

Resize output table by dragging bottom right corner.

Commit notebook outputs in Databricks Git folders​

To learn about committing .ipynb notebook outputs, see Allow committing .ipynb notebook output.

  • The notebook must be a .ipynb file
  • Workspace admin settings must allow notebook outputs to be committed
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