Tableau Server on Windows Help

Tableau Server is localised into multiple languages. Server language and locale settings impact how this affects users. The Language setting controls user interface (UI) items such as menus and messages. The Locale setting controls items in views such as number formatting and currency.

Administrators can configure language and locale on a server-wide basis (see Server Settings (General and Customisation), and individual users can configure their own settings (see Your Account Settings(Link opens in a new window)) . If a user configures their own language and locale, their settings override the server settings.

Supported Languages

Tableau Server is localised into multiple languages. See the "Internationalisation" section of the Tableau Server Technical Specification(Link opens in a new window) page for more information.

Default Settings

The default language for Tableau Server is determined during Setup. If the host computer is configured for a language Tableau Server supports, Tableau Server installs with that language as its default. If computer is configured for a language that is not supported, Tableau Server installs with English as its default language.

How Language and Locale are Determined

Another influence on which language and locale display when a user clicks a view is the user’s web browser. If a server user has not specified a Language setting on their User Account page, and their web browser is set to a language that Tableau Server supports, the browser’s language will be used – even if Tableau Server itself is set to a different language.

Here’s an example: Assume that Tableau Server has a system-wide setting of English as the Language for all users. Server user Claude does not have a language specified on his Tableau Server User Account page. Claude’s browser uses German (Germany) for its language/locale.

When Claude signs in to Tableau Server, the server UI displays in German and when he clicks a view, the view uses the Germany locale for numbers and currency. If Claude had set his user account Language and Locale to French (France), the UI and view would have been displayed in French. His user account setting supersedes those of his web browser, and both of those have precedence over the Tableau Server system-wide setting.

Another setting to be aware of is the Locale setting in Tableau Desktop (File > Workbook Locale). This setting determines the locale of the data in the view, such as which currency is listed or how numbers are formatted. By default, Locale in Tableau Desktop is set to Automatic. However, an author can override that by selecting a specific locale. Using the above example, if the author of View A set Locale to Greek (Greece), certain aspects of the data in View A would display using the Greek (Greece) locale.

Tableau Server uses these settings, in this order of precedence, to determine language and locale:

1. Workbook locale (set in Tableau Desktop)

2. Tableau Server User Account language/locale settings

3. Web browser language/locale

4. Tableau Server Maintenance page language/locale settings

5. Host computer’s language/locale settings