Tableau: Connecting to Data
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Connecting to text files (*.txt, *.csv, *.tab, *.tsv)
- Connecting to Excel files (*.xls and *.xlsx)
- Connecting to Tableau Server and Tableau Online
- Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server
- Conclusion
Introduction
It is no surprise that before you start building your visualizations and analyzing data, you must first connect to a data source. Whether it is an excel file on your machine or relational database, Tableau gets you covered. Tableau supports connecting to a wide variety of data through its +80 built-in connectors, including Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Google Analytics, Hadoop, R, SAP HANA and MS Excel. You may also connect to public domain data available on the web such as U.S. Census Bureau information, or to a cloud database source, such as Google Analytics, Amazon Redshift, or Salesforce.
I will go over the most common connection types: text files, excel files, Tableau Server/Online and Microsoft SQL Server. I will explain the most used options and introduce you to unions, joins and relationships in Tableau.
Let’s begin with the Start Page. It is a page where you land after opening Tableau Desktop:
