Connecting Google Sheets to Tableau Public
A quick overview on connecting your data from google Sheets to Tableau Public.
Google Sheets is a powerful and versatile tool. I recommend Google Sheets because it’s a free service and sometimes more convenient to use within your browser than on a desktop style app like Microsoft Excel. Connecting to Google Sheets is simple enough but you may overlook some key details like keeping data in sync when working on a team. This article aims to walk you through a perfect Google Sheets connection on Tableau Public.
Start off by making sure the data you want to visualize with Tableau is in your Google Sheets account. This can be any kind of spreadsheet you’d like. For my example, I’ll be using a mock profit tracking spreadsheet.
The next step is to open Tableau Public. If you don’t have it installed you can download it here https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/download/thanks. There will be three shelves “Connect”, “Open” and “Discover” displayed on the welcome screen when you open Tableau. Under “Connect” you can choose “To a file” or “To a server”. Under “To a server” you’ll see there is a label for “Google Sheets”. Click on this label and we’ll connect.
Once you click on “Google Sheets” you’ll be prompted in a web browser to authorize Tableau to connect to your data in Google Sheets. Follow the prompts and select “Allow” when asked for authorization by Google.
Great, now we can connect to our data in Google Sheets. Return to the Tableau Public app and there should be a window opened with all your saved google sheets files ready for you to access. You can connect to any sheet you see there by clicking the selected file then clicking “Connect”. You can also use the search bar function if you have lots of files to look through.
Now that we’ve connected to our data, we’ll be on the data source page in Tableau. This is a good spot to do a bit of data cleaning if some things seem out of place. Cleaning up at this step can make it easier to manipulate your data within tableau but it isn’t necessary.
If everything looks in place on this data source page then you’re ready to start your visualization. To jump into visualizing your Google spreadsheet just click the “Sheet 1” at the bottom left of the screen to go to your first worksheet.
Congratulations! Your Google Sheets data is now connected to Tableau Public and you’re free to start visualizing.
Now let’s say you’ve made a great visualization and you’re ready to publish. What happens when you (or someone in your work group) changes the data within the Google Sheets file after you’ve already saved your visualization to Tableau Public’s server? Here’s something you can do to keep that data synced even after it’s been saved.
When saving the visualization, select “Save to Tableau Public as” and make sure to check off the box “keep my data in sync with Google”. Tableau will open a web browser, just follow the prompts and click “Allow” when asked by google to authenticate. Return to Tableau and save your visualization. Now whenever someone changes the data within the Google spreadsheet, the data will also change on your saved Tableau Public page when refreshed.
The interval for when the data is automatically refreshed in Tableau Public is about 24 hours. To have the data within your visualization refreshed sooner simply click the “request update” button on the bottom left of your saved Tableau Public page.
