Here is our freshly installed version of Tableau.

I am sure you are anxious to create some fascinating visualizations, so let’s get started.

First off, we need to learn how to connect Tableau to the data source we will be working

with.

There are two options – we can either create a connection to a file or a server.

Of course, we’ll choose one of the two depending on where our data is.

Let’s connect Tableau to a Microsoft Excel file.

In general, every time we use a source file in one of the lectures, you will be able to

find it in the supplemental resources section.

Just open your Course Curriculum and download the available files for that lesson.

See?

Ok.

Great.

I’ll select the file called GDP data, and under “connections”, I can now see that

Tableau opened the file.

Our source has three sheets – “Data”, “Metadata – Countries”, and “Metadata

– Indicators”.

What we usually have to do is choose the worksheet we’ll need and drag into the upper part

of the screen where “Drag sheets here” is written.

Once we do that Tableau is going to activate the sheet we selected and provide us with

a preview of the data we have inside.

The first two rows of the sheet are empty and hence we see all of these “null” values.

Tableau is really smart and can often help us with similar issues.

As you can see here, the program suggests using its “Data Interpreter” functionality

to clean the data.

All right, let’s do that.

And.. voila!

The first two rows containing null values disappeared.

That’s awesome!

In our next video, we’ll open our first Tableau worksheet, and I’ll be happy to

introduce you to its structure.

This will do for now.

Thanks for watching!