UPDATE: 14 August 2018

If you have at least version Tableau 2018.2, then I'd highly recommend the use of this extensions versus the technique outlined below.

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We’ve all heard this question before: How can I export a CSV in Tableau? To be honest, it’s quite the pain and way more difficult than it should be. There have always been a few options.

1. Users can click on a specific sheet on a dashboard and then export that via the tiny button on the toolbar, but that has a few of its own problems: (1) You may not want to show the toolbar therefore making the export impossible, (2) People have to be trained to know exactly where to click to get it just right, and (3) You have no control over the output of the CSV.
2. You can export a CSV using Tabcmd, but that’s not useful for the average dashboard consumer.
3. You can add .csv to the end of the URL like http://[Tableau Server Location]/views/[Workbook Name]/[View Name].csv.  But again, you never know what that output is going to look like.

Yesterday I learned an incredibly valuable trick that would make option 3 (adding .csv to the URL) export exactly the CSV you want. Let’s look at an example.


On this dashboard, notice how I added an Image object (I used an Excel icon) on the dashboard. I’ve floated it to the upper right and made it small. All the user has to do is click on that icon and they get a nice CSV. Go ahead, try it!

Did you try it? If you did, and you opened the CSV, you may have noticed this looks remarkably like the data that you would hope to get if you exported the data for the line chart. But I didn’t export the line chart at all. Here’s the trick.

1. Add the image icon on the dashboard and place it wherever you like.
2. Add a URL link to the image.  In the dashboard above, the URL is http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/ExporttoCSV/Dashboard.csv?:showVizHome=no.
   
   This is where the magic sauce happens. When you add .csv to the end of a Tableau URL, Tableau will export the first sheet on the dashboard alphabetically.  Yes, it’s that simple!  And it’s totally undocumented.  Special thanks to the one and only Tableau Jedi Mark Rueter for this tip!  But note that Tableau orders upper case before lower case. 
3. What I did was float a sheet named AExport onto the dashboard.  I changed the height to 1 and made everything white and transparent and chose Fit Entire View so that it would be inconspicuous.  I had to name it with a capital A so that it would be the first sheet alphabetically on the dashboard.
   
   
   
   
   
   The AExport worksheet started off like this:
   
   
   
   
   
   Basically, you can put anything you want on this sheet.  I then changed the transparency to 0% on the Color shelf, changed the default worksheet color to white, removed the row banding and removed the row and column dividers.  The worksheet now looks like this:
   
   
   

That’s all there is to it! To recap:

1. Create a worksheet that you want to export.
2. Remove all of the formatting to make it look invisible.
3. Be sure to give it a name that makes it first alphabetically on the dashboard.
4. Place the worksheet on the dashboard, float it, make it fit the entire view, make it really small, move it somewhere inconspicuous.
5. Add an image onto the dashboard, float it and add a URL to it that is the URL for the dashboard with .csv on the end.

This is a game changer!! Download the sample workbook here.

There's a bad stomach bug going around this part of town and I think I might know part of the reason why. Today, my good friends over at Chart of the Day published this pinwheel pie chart and I think the filling might be bad, because the pie sure looks ugly.

Here are some of the problems with this chart:

1. IT'S A PIE CHART!
2. Colors are re-used, or maybe they are so similar it's hard to tell they're different
3. The slices are not in order, making it even hard to look up the values (notice how Microsoft is listed ahead of Peter Thiel and some others)
4. The dollar amounts are based on their portion of $100B, yet they total up to $101,350,000,000.
5. Correspondingly, the percentages add up to 101.4%. How can you have more than 100% of a total?

To highlight the differences, I created the following charts with Tableau.

What I attempted to do here was show the Stated % Share (gray bar) from the pie chart compared to the "Restated % Share" (black bar). I calculated the Restated % Share with the following formula:

SUM([Stated $ Value])/TOTAL(SUM([Stated $ Value]))

NOTE: A special thank you to Marc Reuter (@tableaujedi) for enlightening the ATUG crowd today with some Jedi magic and for showing how to use the TOTAL function. I had never used it before (and didn't know about it either), but I find it totally awesome! It'll be so useful!

Basically, I'm taking the value stated on the pie chart and dividing it by the total value of the pie chart. This gives you the Restated % Share. The label is the difference between the Restated % Share and the Stated % Share.

The chart on the right represents the % variance number (as identified by the label on the left) multiplied by $100B (the estimated total value of Facebook).

If I were one of these shareholders, I'd be a bit concerned about the math. This isn't chump change! In the end, Chart of the Day may have made a $1.35B miscalculation. Oops!

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Download the Tableau workbook here and you will see the original and restated data like this:

The next ATUG meeting will be December 15 @ 1PM ET

Where – Coca-Cola - 1 Coca Cola Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30313, Nicholson Room – Central Reception Building

Important – You must check-in with security and tell them you are there for the Atlanta Tableau User Group meeting.

Plan to arrive at least 15 minutes early!!

RSVP – http://www.tableausoftware.com/usergroups/atlanta-dec15-11

Agenda:

1. Jedi Tricks – Marc Rueter, Tableau Software
   • In this session, Marc will show ten powerful tricks that will make you truly the master of your analytics.
2. Hands-on Training: Tips & Tricks – Andy Kriebel, Coca-Cola
   • Ten powerful tricks that will speed up your work
   • Authoring Brilliant Dashboards
3. Information - January & February Meetings

-- This will be a hands on session - Bring your laptop and Tableau with you --