Workbooks and Sheets

Applies to: Tableau Desktop

Tableau uses a workbook and sheet file structure, much like Microsoft Excel. A workbook contains sheets. A sheet can be a worksheet, a dashboard, or a story.

A worksheet contains a single view along with shelves, cards, legends, and the Data and Analytics panes in its side bar. For details on the worksheet workspace, see The Tableau Workspace.
A dashboard is a collection of views from multiple worksheets. The Dashboard and Layout panes are available in its side bar. For more details about creating dashboards, see Dashboards.
A story contains a sequence of worksheets or dashboards that work together to convey information. The Story and Layout panes are available in its side bar. For more details about creating stories, see Stories.

For details on hiding or showing sheets in a workbook or Viz in Tooltip, see Manage Sheets in Dashboards and Stories(Link opens in a new window) and Hide or show a Viz in Tooltip worksheet(Link opens in a new window). For details on organizing sheets, see Navigate and Organize Sheets. For details on creating and opening workbooks, see Create or Open Workbooks.

About sheets

Each workbook can contain different types of sheets: views (also known as worksheets), dashboards, and stories.

A worksheet is where you build views of your data by dragging and dropping fields onto shelves.
A dashboard is a combination of several views that you can arrange for presentation or to monitor.
A story is a sequence of views or dashboards that work together to convey information.

The sheets display along the bottom of the workbook as tabs. In this section you’ll learn how to create, open, duplicate, hide, and delete sheets. You'll also learn how to organize sheets in a workbook.

Within a workbook, you can create new sheets, clear an entire worksheet, duplicate sheets, hide or show a worksheet, and delete a sheet. Tableau has several ways to view and organize the sheets in your workbook.

Create new worksheets, dashboards, or stories

There are several ways to create new sheets in a workbook, dashboard, or a story. You can create as many sheets in a workbook as you want.

To create a new worksheet, dashboard, or story, click the New Worksheet, New Dashboard, or New Story button at the bottom of the workbook.

The New Worksheet button.

To rename a new worksheet, dashboard, or story, right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the tab and then select the Rename command.

More ways to create new worksheets

Create a new worksheet by doing one of the following:

Select Worksheet > New Worksheet.
Right-click any open tab in the workbook, and select New Worksheet from the menu.
On the toolbar, click the drop-down arrow on the New Worksheet button and then select New Worksheet.
Press Ctrl + M on your keyboard (Command-M on a Mac).

More ways to create new dashboards

Create a new dashboard by doing one of the following:

Select Dashboard > New Dashboard.
Click the New Dashboard button at the bottom of the workbook.
Right-click on any open tab in the workbook, and select New Dashboard from the menu.
On the toolbar, click the drop-down arrow on the New Worksheet button and then select New Dashboard.

Undo, redo, or clear sheets

Every Tableau workbook contains a history of steps you have performed on the worksheets, dashboards, and stories in that workbook for the current work session.

To move backward through the history, click Undo on the toolbar or press Ctrl + Z on your keyboard (Command-Z on a Mac).

To move forward through the history, click Redo on the toolbar or press Ctrl + Y (Command-Y on a Mac) on your keyboard.

To remove all fields, formatting, sizing, axis ranges, filters, sorts, and context filters in the sheet, click Clear Sheet on the toolbar.

To clear specific aspects of the view, use the Clear Sheet drop-down menu.

Note: Using the clear commands on the toolbar does not clear the history. If you decide that you didn’t want to clear the sheet, click the Undo button.

Duplicate a sheet

When you want to use an existing sheet as a jumping off point for more exploration, you can duplicate that sheet. The duplicated sheet contains all of the same fields and settings as a starting point for new analysis.

Duplicate creates a new version of a worksheet, dashboard, or story you can modify without effecting the original sheet.

To duplicate the active sheet, right-click the sheet tab (control-click on Mac) and select Duplicate.

Note: When you duplicate a dashboard, a new version of the dashboard is created, but it still references the original worksheets that were used to create the dashboard.

Duplicate as Crosstab

A crosstab (sometimes referred to as a Pivot Table) is a table that summarizes data in rows and columns of text. It is a convenient way to display the numbers associated with the data view.

To create a new cross-tab sheet based on the data in the current sheet, right-click the sheet tab (control-click on Mac) and select Duplicate as Crosstab. Or select Worksheet > Duplicate as Crosstab.

This command inserts a new worksheet or worksheets into your workbook and populates the sheet with a cross-tab view of the data from the original worksheet. Dashboards and stories cannot be duplicated as crosstabs.

Rename sheets

To rename the active sheet, right-click (control-click on Mac) the sheet in the sheet tab along the bottom of the workbook, and then click Rename Sheet .

Or, double-click the name of the sheet in a sheet tab, type a new name, and then click Enter.

See the underlying data in a sheet

To see the numbers behind the marks in your view

Hover over or click a mark to display the associated data in a tooltip. With the tooltip open, click the View Data command at the top of the tooltip to view underlying data.

Right-click the view (with no marks selected), and then click View Data.

You can copy and paste the data into Excel or another application. To export the underlying data, click Export All.

Delete sheets

Deleting a sheet removes it from the workbook. There must always be at least one worksheet in a workbook.

To delete the active sheet, right-click (control-click on Mac) the sheet in the sheet tab along the bottom of the workbook, and then click Delete .

Worksheets used in a dashboard or story cannot be deleted, but they can be hidden.

A worksheet used as Viz in Tooltip can be hidden or deleted.

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