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March 23, 2012

An Invaluable Tool – The Tableau Reshaper

9 comments
This blog post is mostly a duplication of the Reshaping Data Made Easy” blog post from Tableau Software.  It’s recreated with the permission of Ross Perez.

You can download the reshaper here.

If you have been using the 4.1 version, there’s really not much difference.  The changes are mainly conveniences.  Andy Cotgreave did an excellent job upgrading the tool.

For more information on preparing Excel files for analysis, please click here.

Reshaping Data Made Easy

Submitted by Ross Perez on March 16, 2012 - 4:53pm

Today we are releasing a new version of our data reshaper add-in for Excel 2007-2010 (32- and 64-bit). For those who are not familiar with this tool, it’s a free add-in that helps you prepare your Excel files for analysis.



There are three main changes.

The biggest change is the addition of the “Open in Tableau” button. Press this and, hey presto, Tableau opens a new workbook connected to your current workbook.



Visually we have updated the UI so that it now has an Excel ribbon style interface making it easier to get to the buttons and generally making things a little easier on the eye.

The final change is the addition of 2 keyboard shortcuts to help speed up your process. The shortcuts available are as follows:
  • Ctrl+Alt+T: Open in Tableau
  • Ctrl+Alt+R: Reshape data
We hope that this new version of the tool will speed up your analytics using Tableau and Excel files.

Important: This tool is a free, unsupported, undocumented add-in from Tableau. Although it has been tested to work on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel you should back up your data before using it.






9 comments :

  1. I would love to be able to adapt the reshaping code to loop through the ten sheets I have in a workbook, so I don't have to run it for every single one separately. Is there any chance you could share that VBA code?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I didn't write the VBA, so no, I don't have it. Reach out to Andy Cotgreave on Twitter. He may be able to help you. https://twitter.com/acotgreave

      Delete
    2. I reshaped "wide" data of quarterly salesperson headcounts by region, and headcounts of ppl who support them. When I reshape, I have one column w/ population values. How can I express a ratio of salesppl vs support staff?

      Delete
    3. Louise, you can handle this through a calculated field. When you reshape the data, you get two new columns, one with the measure names and one with the measure values.

      For example, your columns might be named "Measure" and "Value". Let's assume the "Measure" column contains things like: SalesPpl, SupportStaff.

      You then create a couple calculated fields
      1. Create a calculated field named "Sales People" and the calculation would be IIF([Measure]="SalesPpl",[Value],NULL).
      2. Create a calculated field named "Support Staff" and the calculation would be IIF([Measure]="SupportStaff",[Value],NULL).
      3. Create a calculated field named "Sales People vs. Support Staff" and the calculation would be SUM([Sales People])/SUM([Support Staff])

      Give that a shot.

      Delete
  2. The ZIP & EXE links go 404, are they still active? As you've described, the link on the Tableau page doesn't work and I really need this to save me hours and hours of work.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nicholas, I've fixed the link, but this functionality is already available directly in Tableau starting with version 8.

      Delete
  3. Hi Andy, thank you very much for your help. I don't use Tableau so this stand alone functionality is a huge help for me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Andy, thank you very much for your help. I don't use Tableau so this stand alone functionality is a huge help for me.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The ZIP & EXE links go 404, are they still active? As you've described, the link on the Tableau page doesn't work and I really need this to save me hours and hours of work.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete