How to Copy One Dashboard to Another in Tableau

Building a great dashboard in Tableau takes time and effort. So when you need a similar one for a different team, a new region, or a weekly report, the idea of starting from scratch can be deflating. The good news is, you don’t have to. This guide will walk you through exactly how to copy a dashboard in Tableau, whether you're working in the same workbook or need to move it to a completely new file.

Why Bother Copying a Tableau Dashboard?

Reusing your work isn't just about saving a few minutes, it’s a strategic way to make your reporting more efficient, scalable, and consistent. Once you nail down a dashboard design that works, copying it becomes a powerful part of your workflow.

Here are a few common scenarios where copying is a lifesaver:

• Creating Templates: Design a master dashboard with your company's branding, approved color schemes, and standard chart layouts. Whenever a new report is needed, you can simply copy this template and drop in the relevant data, ensuring every report looks and feels consistent.
• Regional or Departmental Variations: Let’s say you have an overall sales dashboard. Instead of rebuilding it for the North American, European, and APAC teams, you can copy the original three times and apply a different regional filter to each new version. The layout, KPIs, and charts remain identical, only the data displayed changes.
• Safe Experimentation: Have an idea for a major change to a critical dashboard, but terrified of messing it up? Just duplicate it first. You can experiment freely on the copied version. If the changes work out, you can replace the original or keep it. If they don’t, you can delete the copy with no harm done.
• Periodic Reporting: You might need to create snapshots of a dashboard for specific timeframes, like Q1, Q2, and Q3 reports. Copying allows you to create these historical versions without losing your main, ever-updating "live" dashboard.

By treating your best dashboards as reusable assets, you can deliver valuable insights much faster and focus your energy on analysis rather than on repetitive setup tasks.

The Easiest Method: Duplicating a Dashboard in the Same Workbook

Let's start with the most common and simplest scenario: you need another version of an existing dashboard inside the same Tableau file (.twb or .twbx). This is perfect for creating slight variations or for testing changes.

Tableau makes this incredibly easy with a one-click solution. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the Tableau workbook containing the dashboard you want to copy.
2. Navigate to the bottom tab bar where all your worksheets and dashboards are listed.
3. Locate the tab for the dashboard you wish to copy.
4. Right-click on the dashboard's tab. A context menu will appear.
5. From the menu, select Duplicate.

That's it! Tableau will instantly create an exact copy of your dashboard in a new tab. It will typically be named something like "Dashboard 1 (2)". All the worksheets, visualizations, layout containers, filters, legends, and most dashboard actions from the original will be perfectly preserved in the copy.

Pro Tip: Rename Immediately

To avoid confusing a series of "Sales Dashboard (2)", "Sales Dashboard (3)", and so on, it's a good practice to rename the new dashboard right away. Right-click on the new tab, choose Rename, and give it a clear, descriptive name like "Sales Dashboard - EMEA" or "Website Traffic - Test Version". This small step makes navigating your workbook much easier as it grows more complex.

How to Copy a Dashboard to a Different Tableau Workbook

This is where things get a bit more involved, but it’s a situation many analysts face. You might have built a perfect campaign performance dashboard in one client's workbook and want to reuse its structure for another client without sending them sensitive data. Or perhaps you want to consolidate the best dashboards from multiple files into a single master workbook.

Unlike duplicating within a workbook, there's no direct "copy to another workbook" button. Instead, the process involves copying the building blocks of the dashboard - the worksheets - and then reassembling the dashboard itself.

Step-by-Step Guide to Copying Between Workbooks

Follow these steps carefully to ensure a smooth transition. For this example, we’ll call them the Source Workbook (where your dashboard currently is) and the Destination Workbook (where you want it to go).

Step 1: Open Both Workbooks

Start by opening both Tableau workbooks side by side. This will make it easier to transfer the sheets.

Step 2: Identify and Select All Component Worksheets

In your Source Workbook, look at the dashboard you want to copy. In the Dashboard pane (usually on the left side), find the "Sheets" section. This lists every single worksheet that powers the visualizations on your dashboard. Take note of their names.

Now, go to the bottom tab bar and find those worksheet tabs.

• To select multiple worksheets at once, hold down the Ctrl key (or Cmd key on a Mac) and click on each worksheet tab that is part of your dashboard. They will all become highlighted.

Step 3: Copy the Worksheets

With all the necessary worksheets selected, right-click on any one of the highlighted tabs. In the context menu, click Copy. Tableau has now copied the structure, formatting, and data connection information for all selected sheets.

Step 4: Paste the Worksheets into the Destination Workbook

Switch over to your Destination Workbook. Go to its tab bar, right-click on any existing tab or in an empty area of the tab bar, and select Paste from the menu.

The worksheets you copied will now appear in your destination workbook. Voilà! The core of your dashboard is now transferred.

A quick note on data sources: If the Destination Workbook doesn't already have a connection to the data source used by these worksheets, Tableau will copy that data source over as well. If it does have a data source with the exact same name, it might ask you to resolve the conflict or merge them.

Step 5: Re-create the Dashboard Layout

This is the manual part of the process. The worksheets are here, but the dashboard structure is not.

1. In your Destination Workbook, create a new, blank dashboard by clicking the "New Dashboard" icon in the bottom tab bar.
2. Resize your new dashboard to match the dimensions of the original. You can find these settings in the Dashboard pane on the left. Consider taking a screenshot of your original dashboard or keeping it open on another screen as a reference.
3. Drag the worksheets from the "Sheets" list onto your new dashboard canvas. Arrange them in the same layout as the original–using containers if necessary to get the alignment just right.
4. Add back any dashboard objects that didn't come across, like text boxes, images, or web page containers.

Step 6: Reconnect Filters, Actions, and Legends

The final and most crucial step is to double-check the interactivity. Your filters and actions don't always paste over perfectly between workbooks.

• Filters: If a filter on your original dashboard was set to "Apply to Worksheets > Selected Worksheets," you'll need to reconfigure that link. Click the dropdown arrow on your filter object and make sure it’s applying to all the correct sheets on your newly copied dashboard.
• Actions: Go to the top menu and select Dashboard > Actions. You will likely need to recreate any filter actions, URL actions, or highlight actions you were using. This ensures that clicking on one chart correctly filters or highlights another.

Once you’ve confirmed everything looks and functions as expected, your dashboard has been successfully copied between workbooks.

Best Practices for Managing Copied Dashboards

To keep your analytics projects from becoming a tangled mess, follow these simple best practices:

• Maintain Clear Naming Conventions: Don't leave your dashboards with names like "Dashboard 2 Copy (4)." Use a system that makes sense, such as "[Report Name] - [Region/Team] - [Date if applicable]." For example, "Q1 Sales Performance - US Team - v1."
• Organize Data Sources: When copying between workbooks, data sources can sometimes be duplicated accidentally. Regularly use the "Replace Data Source" feature to consolidate duplicates and keep things clean.
• Create a "Templates" Workbook: If you frequently reuse layouts, consider creating a dedicated Tableau workbook that serves as a library of pre-built dashboard templates. This saves you from hunting down the "perfect" dashboard to copy from a previous project.
• Quickly Check the Underlying Data: Sometimes it's useful to see the raw data behind a chart. For any worksheet, you can right-click its tab and select "Duplicate as Crosstab." This creates a new sheet with the data in a simple table format, which is great for quick validation, especially after copying to a new workbook.

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to copy a dashboard is a fundamental Tableau skill that shifts your effort from manual repetition to strategic analysis. Duplicating within a workbook takes seconds and is perfect for quick iterations, while copying between workbooks requires a more deliberate process of moving the component worksheets and rebuilding the layout.

Manually recreating layouts and reconnecting filters can feel tedious, especially for complex dashboards. At Graphed, we felt this friction firsthand. That’s why we leverage natural language to build your dashboards for you. Instead of dragging, dropping, and re-linking, you can simply ask, "create a new dashboard with my US, UK, and Canada traffic charts" and have it done in seconds, allowing you to focus on the insights, not just the setup.