How to Create Your First Tableau Report
In this article, you will learn how to create your first Tableau Report.
Tableau Public is free and great for practice. For enterprise, however, it is strongly recommended that you install Tableau Desktop.
You can download this here: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/download
Once you have installed the software you will be using, you can begin creating your report.
Select File → New to create a new workbook. Then, click “Connect to Data.” From here, you can choose files to upload.
The data we are working with in this example contains the nutrition facts of all the items on McDonald’s menu. Let’s say we want to create a visual that allows us to see which food items contain the most calories.
In this case, since we are building a bar chart, we will want one axis to contain a categorical variable, and the other to contain a quantitative variable. We will drag and drop the “Calories” measure in Columns, and “Item” in Rows.
There are many different features we can apply to this bar chart. For example, using the buttons in the ribbon at the top of the screen, we can sort the bars by the number of calories in each item in ascending or descending order.
To change the color of the bars, click “Color” in the Marks card on the left and select a color of your choice.
At the bottom of the screen, click the “New Worksheet” option to create as many worksheets as needed. To compile multiple worksheets into one dashboard, select “New Dashboard,” located directly to the right of the “New Worksheet” button. From here, you can drag and drop as many worksheets as you like to create a dashboard.
Congratulations! You have created your very first Tableau Report.