Tableau Reshaper Tool

Tableau Desktop is also a leading new generation Business Intelligence (BI) application which is also dubbed as a “self-service” data discovery tool as it can be used to achieve with almost no support from IT staff. This product shines as a graphical tool or a visualization tool, where you would have relied on various other tools and takes longer durations to represent the bar charts or the pie charts.

Along with this comes one of the most invaluable tools with Tableau in a quest to reshape the data as required. Let us take a closer look into this tool and its functionality in the section below.

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Tableau Add in for Excel

Q1) What is Tableau’s Reshaper Tool?

Ans: There is a new release of Tableau’s own version of the data shaper add-on for the Microsoft Excel 2007-2010, both for the 32 bit and the 64-bit versions. For individuals who are not aware of this tool or add-on, this is just an add-on that sits on your Excel which helps you prepare the data in the Excel files for your analysis in Tableau. There are 3 new features that are added to this add-on in its latest release.

1. The biggest change and the most visible change is the availability of the “Open in Tableau” button. On clicking this button, Tableau opens a new connection with the excel file in a new workbook (connected to your current workbook).

2. The next change that is visible on this add-on is the Excel ribbon-style interface that makes it very easy to get to the buttons that are most needed (to reshape the data on your excel files), catches the eye on the very first look itself.

3. last but not least is the addition of two more shortcuts to help speed the whole process of reshaping the data for your analysis.

• CTRL + ALT + T -> Open in Tableau
• CTRL + ALT + R -> Reshape the data

With the background on the add-on made clear, let us go through the process of installing this add-on onto your system so that we can start using it right away. Firstly let us take a look at the installation process for Excel 2010 to 2013 and then we will take up the installation process for Excel 2007 in a different section (the change in the installation process should make it clear that the tool behaves in two different manners, with a different version of Excel that is being used with).

 

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Q2) How to install the Tableau reshaper add-on in Excel 2010 and 2013?

Ans: 

1. You can click on this link to download the Excel add-on that needs to be installed

2. to the folder location where you have downloaded the Tableau add-on, double click to open the tableau_data_tool.zip file, and then double-click to install the add-on.

3. Open Microsoft Excel, click on File -> Options -> Add-ins

4. From the manage box that appears, select Excel Add-ins, and then you can click on Go.

5. In the add-ins dialog box that appears, you can verify whether the checkbox adjacent to Tableau add-in is selected or not and then click OK to finish the process.

 

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Q3) How to install the Tableau reshaper add-on in Excel 2007?

Ans: 

1. You can click on this link to download the Excel add-on that needs to be installed.

2. Traverse to the folder location where you have downloaded the Tableau add-on, double click to open the tableau_data_tool.zip file, and then double-click to install the add-on.

3. Open Microsoft Excel, click on Microsoft Office button -> Excel options -> Add-ins

4. From the manage box that appears, you need to select Excel add-ins and then you click on Go.

5. In the add-ins dialog box that appears, you can verify whether the checkbox adjacent to the Tableau add-ins is selected or not and then click OK to finish the process.

In both of the installation processes, either Excel 2007 or Excel 2010-2013, if you want to verify whether the installation was a success or not then you need to do the following. Verify that the add-on is enabled by following the steps mentioned above in the installation process (namely following points 3, 4 and 5).

Conclusion:

In this article, we have seen a little bit of how the Tableau software products help businesses make the necessary decisions based on the data that is available at their disposal. Adding to the features that are already provided by the Tableau software is the offering provided by the Reshaper add-on to your excel files and to Tableau in turn.

[Related Article: Heat Maps, Bar Chart And Line Charts In Tableau]

One of the most important points to note here is that there is no support, no documentation available for this add-on to the Tableau software, and also it is a free add-on to the Tableau software products. There is a clear note that says even when this add-on has been tested with both 32 bit and 64-bit versions of excel, it is always recommended to have backups of your data on which you want to reshape the data.

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