Step 2: Load data

For the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to connect Tableau to a Microsoft Excel .xlsx file, but these skills will apply to other data sources as well. Tableau is capable of importing data from a wide range of file types (including .csv, .txt, PDF, and JSON), but Microsoft Excel files are some of the most commonly used.

Download the tutorial data

To start, download the example tutorial data using the button below.

  Download tutorial data  

This file contains information on average flight delays by month for 17 airlines at 20 major airports in the USA for the year 2013. Please take a moment to look at the data and get familiar with it.

This dataset contains the following variables:

Date The month and year of the flight delay statistics in d/m/y format (the day is always the 1st of the month and can be ignored)
Airline Name of the airline
Airport Code Three-letter abbreviation for the airport
Airport Name Full name of the airport
City City the airport is located in
State State the airport is located in
Number of Flights Number of flights in the specified month for the specified airline and airport
Average Delay (Minutes) Average minutes of delay per flight in the specified month for the specified airline and airport

Load the data into Tableau

To load the data, first open Tableau. On the left-hand side you will see a blue panel that says “Connect” at the top. On this panel, click “Microsoft Excel” under the “To a File” header and navigate to and select the tutorial data file on your computer.

Congrats, you just loaded the .xlsx into Tableau! If you are using Tableau Desktop, the .xlsx file is now linked to your Tableau project and Tableau will update if you change the data in the .xlsx for any reason. If you are using Tableau Public, you would need to re-upload your .xlsx file any time you make changes to the data.

See how Tableau is organized

You should now see the data loaded into Tableau, like so.

This is the “Data Source” tab. You can get back to it anytime by clicking the “Data Source” tab button in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

Tableau is organized into four basic navigation tabs:

  • Data Source
  • Worksheets
  • Dashboards
  • Stories (not covered in this tutorial)

The "Data Source" contains the underlying data that you have imported. The "Worksheets" or "Sheets" allow you to use that data to create charts. The "Dashboards" then allow you to display and arrange multiple sheets together. This workflow will become clearer in the steps that follow as we build several charts and then use them to create a dashboard.