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.

A common question I get, and I’m sure you do too, is “How can I get my Tableau Dashboard into a PowerPoint presentation?”  This question has a couple of solutions.

1. If you want a “live” Tableau dashboard in PowerPoint, see this blog post.
2. If you want to embed the “latest snapshot” of a dashboard, i.e., an image that updates automatically, then continue reading.

The URL to your dashboard will have a link similar to this: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/ArsenalPerformance/TheDominanceofRVP

All you have to do to get an image of the dashboard is to add “.png” to the end of the URL.  My URL now looks like: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/ArsenalPerformance/TheDominanceofRVP.png and here’s the resulting image.

This is a nice static snapshot, but your user, let’s see she’s a saleswoman, wants this in PowerPoint (she doesn’t want to have to go to Tableau Server) and she wants PowerPoint to always reflect the latest data.  An example might be a sales report that you published on Tableau Server that refreshes weekly on Sunday night.  The saleswoman wants to open PowerPoint every Monday and have it reflect the latest data.

Here’s how you do it (Windows only):

Step 1 – From the PowerPoint ribbon, choose Insert –> Image.

Step 2 – Paste the link to the image in the File name box and click the triangle next to the Open button.

Step 3 – The Open button might gray out for a few seconds while the image is retrieved and you may be prompted to login to Tableau Server.  Go ahead and do so.

Step 4 – Choose Insert and Link when the menu appears.

That’s it!  You now have an embedded, dynamically updating image from your Tableau Server inside PowerPoint.  Of course, you now need to save the PowerPoint file.

When your saleswoman opens the PowerPoint file, she’ll be prompted with a security warning.  She needs to choose Enable Content.

Another security warning may appear, and she should choose Yes at this message.  She should NOT check the “Do not ask me…” message because that setting extends beyond this specific file.

The image now reflects the latest data on Tableau Server.  Try it yourself by opening the PPT file used for this blog post here.

Reminder: This works for Windows only.  PowerPoint on Mac does not have the same embed functionality (that I could find).  Also, when you open the PPT file on a Mac, your are not given the prompt to Enable External Images and the image will not update dynamically.

If anyone knows how to do this in PowerPoint on a Mac, please let me know.  That’s really what I need.