Connect Google Sheets to Tableau: A Comprehensive Guide

By: Published: July 7, 2020

Google Sheets to Tableau

Do you want to connect Google Sheets to Tableau? Are you looking for a simple guide to help you out? Well, look no further! This guide provides you with a simple step-by-step solution to help you establish a connection between the two. It also provides a brief introduction to both Google Sheets and Tableau to enhance your knowledge.
Upon a complete walkthrough of the content, you will be able to connect Google Sheets to Tableau easily. It will help you make better data-driven decisions.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Google Sheets

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It is a free-web based spreadsheet service provided by Google. It provides the full functionality of a spreadsheet application and helps to perform data analysis. It can be accessed easily using a web browser and integrates exceptionally well with many other cloud-based applications.

It uses charting tools and pivot tables to perform data analysis and delivers exceptional performance even when working with large data sets.

For further information on Google Sheets, you can check the official site here.

Introduction to Tableau

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Tableau is a powerful business intelligence tool used to turn raw data into an understandable format. It is a tool popularly used to visualize data and can be understood even by a non-technical user. 

It creates visualizations with the help of dashboards and worksheets, helping users perform real-time analysis in a very fast and secure manner. It doesn’t require a user to have any programming skill or technical background to operate it.

For further information on Tableau, you can check the official site here.

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Prerequisites

  • Working knowledge of Google Sheets.
  • Working knowledge of Tableau.
  • Tableau installed at the host workstation.
  • A Google account.

Connecting Google Sheets to Tableau

Tableau’s in-built Google Sheets connector lets you connect Google Sheets to Tableau easily. You can establish a connection between the two using Tableau’s interactive interface. Tableau has rich API support that allows you to manipulate data and perform an insightful analysis.

Using Tableau’s Google Sheet connector

This can be implemented using the following steps:

Step 1: Signing in to Tableau

Launch Tableau on your workstation and log in as a user with a creator role. Select Google Sheets from the connect column on the left.

Signing into Tableau.

This will open a dialogue box where you need to provide the credentials for your Google account.

Signing into Google.

Step 2: Signing in to Google Sheets

Enter the credentials for your Google account carefully and sign-in to Google Sheets. Once you have signed in, you will be requested to provide Tableau, access to your data stored in Google Sheets.

Connecting Google Sheets to Tableau.

Click on allow to let Tableau successfully access your data.

Step 3: Extracting the desired sheet

Once you have signed-in successfully, a page representing your data stored in Google Sheets will now show up. Select the desired sheet that you want to visualize with the help of Tableau.

Extracting the desired sheet - Transfer Data for Free from Google Sheets to your target destination

Click on connect to establish the connection & successfully transfer data from Google Sheets to Tableau. Select the extract option to include the entire data set for the selected sheet.

Tableau now displays the dimensions and metrics for the data you’ve loaded from Google Sheets. Select the desired data and drag it onto the canvas to start analyzing it.

This is how you can connect Google Sheets to Tableau.

Limitations of connecting Google Sheets to Tableau

  • Tableau doesn’t support real-time data updates. Changes made in the Google Sheet won’t reflect in Tableau immediately. The only way to refresh data is to use a periodic data refresh mechanism.
  • Tableau has limited support for data transformation. This hampers performance, especially when you are dealing with data that requires complex transformations before visualizing it.
  • To visualize data from multiple sources, you need to use joins in Tableau. Using a join on complex data can be challenging, especially for beginners.
  • Tableau doesn’t support team-drive accounts for Google Sheets.

Conclusion

This article teaches you how to connect Google Sheets to Tableau. It also provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. These methods, however, can be challenging especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day. Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps to combine data from Google Sheets along with multiple sources and visualize it in Tableau. Hevo with its strong integration with Google Sheets (among 100+ sources) allows you to not only transfer & load data but also transform & enrich your data & make it analysis-ready in a jiff.

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Hevo can help you Integrate your data from numerous sources like Google Sheets and load them into a destination to Analyze real-time data with a BI tool such as Tableau. It will make your life easier and data migration hassle-free. It is user-friendly, reliable, and secure.

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Share your experience of learning about Google Sheets to Tableau in the comments section below.

Talha
Software Developer, Hevo Data

Talha is a seasoned Software Developer, currently driving advancements in data integration at Hevo Data, where he have been instrumental in shaping a cutting-edge data integration platform for the past four years. With a significant tenure at Flipkart prior to their current role, he brought innovative solutions to the space of data connectivity and software development.

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