Excel like Tables in Tableau Supported in 24.2 and later | New in 24.3

[@TableauTim]

I have no idea how or why i dragged Lat and Long! I blame dad brain. You can see at the start i have a different chart so i must have just lost the plot / tunnel vision with the instruction.

[@mateuszkarmalski7905]

It appears automatically when you drag field with geographic role I guess

[@datawoj]

Great video thanks Tim. This extension has a lot of potential. Quite often clients want analysis in Excel format as well as a dashboard.

[@kirkmunroe29]

Great overview. Surprisingly good for a 1.0!

[@machtmann2881]

I instantly downloaded the new version of Tableau after I saw your LI post on this. It's a really cool extension that will get some requests off my back! There are still a few things to improve though. It still chokes if you try to put 1 million rows in the Tableau table. Because of the way I believe Tableau aggregates first thing in a viz, it needs to look at all data at once and probably can't do pagination first thing (although maybe the extension will allow that at once point). That does match the Excel limitation though haha. I noticed the tooltips are off though if I have a large table and I put a Tableau filter on it (separate from the table extension filter). The tooltip doesn't seem to recognize that some records are filtered out and shows what would be there without it. But I just turn them off since there's little point in tooltips when you can look at the entire table.

[@Gdesplanque]

Great extension, definitely we will use it.

[@jaki614]

superb video, thank you! Is dynamic word wrapping functionality possible with this table extension?

[@firstname4337]

about freaking time

[@MaxLData]

Hey Tim, really enjoyed the video. I have been messing around with it a little bit. Do you know if it is possible to have more than 5 rules per column? I want the color of the background to change based on the text, but I have 18 different texts/colors to use. Thanks!

[@Yeeeeeeeeeeeel]

Hello Tim! Does it have the drill functionality of the "SuperTables" viz extension? Wherein, if you drill down, only that row will expand, the rest will remain as-is. Thanks!

[@TableauTim]

No. I think tableau respect super tables for what it is. You could build some interaction in a dashboard to solve for this. Additionally you can use set actions potentially to adapt the field you use in details to create this effect

[@stewart145able]

Is it possible to add total rows or format the headers in anyway in the new extension ? Many thanks great video !

[@TableauTim]

Not yet. Interestingly you could build this on another sheet and put it on the same dashboard and just make sure they’re linked up in terms of actions as a makeshift solution.

[@sidvip100]

Love this ext. but is this a Tableau owned viz extension or something like supertables which is owned by infotopics? Reason I ask is being from the health care industry we need to have contracts created. We are already partnered with Tableau.

[@machtmann2881]

It is Tableau owned so there shouldn't be a need for another contract :)

[@lokeshs9020]

hi sir, can you please explain how to freeze rows in tableau and also how to highlight (Color) specific rows in tableau which is in table format

[@TableauTim]

You can’t not without hacks. You can design your dashboard to do this in other ways

[@lokeshs9020]

Can you show some hacks where I can highlight specific rows and freeze the columns

[@lokeshs9020]

​@@TableauTimcan you please show how to colour specific rows and also add up and down arrow (green & red colour) for one of the columns.

[@josiahariote1129]

Hi Tim.. thanks for the information… how about extension for Tableau Server?

[@TableauTim]

It’s supported. Your admins need to do the installation. This is where I think admins needs to catchup a little bit with their perspective on how extensions work especially extensions built by Tableau the vendor of their platform.

[@rachely6604]

Hope it will support pivot table function!!!

[@TableauTim]

Great suggestion

[@renatoricci5647]

Hi! Is there a way of adding a new font to the Table extension? I wanna use Calibri which is not available

[@TableauTim]

Not at present. I think it’s using the ones that come with cloud so when that gets updated then the list should grow.

[@rbrito71]

Tim, the first thing I noticed is that you cannot align the numbers to the right or any type of alignment at all. That is basic functionality for any table. Do you know if that’s possible?

[@TableauTim]

Great suggestion for the team. That sort of alignment is possible in the older tables and the extension will get an update I assume. It’s just a v1

[@sidiq64]

Hi tim. thanks for the video. However, I have some situations. Can you freeze pane the column like excel? I attached many columns and need to freeze pane the first two left columns and can not figure it out yet. Also I want to change the number format in million and insert the currency and not figure it out yet. Appreciate if you can help. thanks

[@TableauTim]

I showed everything possible so no. You can design your dash to be better than freeze frame. This is tableau so interactivity is always an option in ways better than freeze frames.

[@abishekthirukonda5607]

Can we add a spark lines to this chart if the data is for dimension time series?

[@TableauTim]

Not currently an option. I covered all the current options in the interface

[@궁금궁금-j3k]

One of the difficult issues when creating a table in Tableau is merging header cells. Are these things possible in the extension program? And thank you for the video

[@TableauTim]

Not at present the extension is trying to solve for the 80% rather than 20% I imagine headers will be a big focus. Even just pivoting the table would be great.

[@I3lack]

Is this working well on Tableau Server?

[@TableauTim]

its supported in 24.2 Server yes. It would work exactly the same as tableau cloud. the extensions is hosted by tableau so its the same backend on cloud or server given how extensions work.

[@I3lack]

@@TableauTim I appreciate your quick and full answer, thank you

[@Laura-JayneSimms]

Thought this was great until I implemented it on a dashboard and realised it won’t export as a PDF, it just goes blank. So disappointing as was hoping to use this for a management dashboard.

[@TableauTim]

Yes this has been the case for viz extensions. Out of interested if you create a pdf what do you expect to happen? Multiple pages of the table or just what’s on screen? You can export to excel and pdf that instead.

[@Laura-JayneSimms]

@@TableauTim just what is on the screen in the PDF as I have it set up as a subscription. The problem is for that workaround I’d have to do it manually and it doesn’t keep the conditional formatting when you export it to excel.

[@TableauTim]

@Laura-JayneSimms it did keep my formatting to excel as much as is supported for the colour and bars. But the conditional natured doesn’t adapt in excel if you then say edit the figure. Understand the issue though if it’s just one dashboard I think screenshot is fine if your heading to a pdf, it takes the same amount of time but if your doing batch reporting plus you need no touch automation, absolutely makes sense.

[@toniaperretta1944]

So exciting, but... does anybody know if there's a product development request for this extension? If so, I'd love to add my feedback because 80% of the way there is effectively 0% for us, without these other features including: (1) ability to link conditional formatting to a calculation and/or parameter rather than hard-coding values (2) we use bespoke colour palettes for our clients by editing the preferences file and don't want to have to write in the hex code each time (3) ability to change cell alignment left/middle/right (4) now this one is pushing it I know but anyway: ability for financial data to automatically have the correct currency symbol as a prefix or suffix as relevant.

[@deepankarsrigyan9122]

I think they do not have total for row and columns, or did I just miss it

[@TableauTim]

It’s not 💯 I think because of the way the table works especially with text and numbers it’s maybe an addition to follow. The bars and colour tyoes would t work with totals unless you just want tos we the number as text?

[@jmstampe]

It’s 2024 and Tableau finally starts adding functionality that Excel has had since the 1990s 😂. Are you capable of formatting specific rows? I work in the financial industry, and no matter how much you’re asked to “Tableau,” people will ask how to “Excel” it. I really wish this was just a standard Tableau functionality OOTB.

[@TableauTim]

You can right conditional rules for specific rows yes. I don’t think the idea of this tool is to copy excel. It’s to bring some capabilities people like in excel to tableau hence Excel Like.

[@jmstampe]

@@TableauTim that’s cool. Better than nothing. PowerBi is the same with conditional formatting….but they don’t have a bold feature.

[@dlrbrts]

Has anyone else experienced issues with Viz extensions when your resultant viz is embedded? This new tables extension looks interesting, but I am reluctant to devote too much time to trying it out if they don't display properly in embedded vizzes.

[@FedericoLov]

Or just use Excel which is always the best

[@TableauTim]

Except that’s not what users are asking for. A bit like saying just use a horse to throttle head who wants more hoarse power. Excel like != excel. To users it means searching columns and searching the table whilst in a tableau dashboard.