How to Open Tableau Prep in Tableau Desktop

Trying to open a Tableau Prep flow directly within Tableau Desktop can leave you searching through menus that don't exist. While the two tools are designed to work together seamlessly, they are separate applications for a reason. This guide will walk you through the correct workflow for using data you've cleaned in Tableau Prep to build visualizations in Tableau Desktop, and explain why this process works the way it does.

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Understanding the Tableau Ecosystem: Two Tools, One Goal

First, it's important to understand the specific job of each application. Think of it like cooking a meal. You have a kitchen for preparing the ingredients and a dining room for presenting the final dish. You wouldn't try to chop vegetables in the dining room, and you wouldn't serve dinner in the kitchen. In this analogy:

• Tableau Prep Builder is your 'data kitchen.' Its entire purpose is to take raw, messy data from various sources (spreadsheets, databases, cloud apps) and get it ready for analysis. You use it to clean, pivot, join, union, and shape your data into a pristine, usable format.
• Tableau Desktop is your 'presentation dining room.' This is where you connect to that clean, prepared data and turn it into insightful charts, interactive dashboards, and compelling stories. Its focus is on visualization and data exploration, not heavy data transformation.

By keeping these tasks separate, Tableau ensures each tool is optimized for its job. Tableau Prep can handle heavy data processing without slowing down your visualization work, and Tableau Desktop can remain fast and responsive for analysis.

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The Core Workflow: Using Your Tableau Prep Flow in Tableau Desktop

The correct process isn't about opening one file in the other application. Instead, it's a three-step workflow: you build a cleaning process (a 'flow') in Prep, run that flow to generate a clean output file, and then connect to that clean file from Desktop. Here's how it's done.

Step 1: Clean and Shape Your Data in Tableau Prep

Before you can use your data in Tableau Desktop, you need to prepare it. Let's imagine you have sales data in one spreadsheet and marketing campaign data in another. The column names don't match, and there are some blank rows you need to remove.

1. Open Tableau Prep Builder.
2. Connect to your data sources. You might connect to an Excel file with sales figures and a CSV with marketing spend.
3. Drag your tables onto the canvas to start your flow.
4. Add cleaning steps to fix issues. For example, you might add a 'Clean' step to remove unwanted fields, rename columns for clarity (e.g., standardizing "Sale Amount" and "revenue" to "Revenue"), and filter out null values.
5. Join your sources. Add a 'Join' step to combine your sales data with your marketing data on a common field, like the date or campaign ID. This lets you analyze which marketing efforts led to sales.
6. Review your changes in Prep's visual interface to confirm everything looks right. The flowchart view makes it incredibly easy to follow your logic and spot potential errors before you create your output.

Step 2: Create a Clean Output from Your Flow

Once your flow is built and your data is perfectly structured, the final step in Tableau Prep is to generate an output. This cements your cleaning and joins into a new, organized data source that Tableau Desktop can use.

1. Add an 'Output' step: In your Tableau Prep flow, click the '+' icon on your final cleaning or join step and select 'Output'.
2. Choose an 'Output type': You have a few options, but the most common for working with Tableau Desktop are:
3. Run the Flow: Click the "Run Flow" button. Tableau Prep will execute all the cleaning, joining, and transformation steps you defined and create your final .hyper file or published data source.

You have now successfully prepared your ingredients. Your clean data is stored and ready to be used.

Step 3: Connect to Your New Data in Tableau Desktop

Now, it's time to head over to Tableau Desktop to build your dashboards.

1. Open Tableau Desktop.
2. On the 'Connect' panel on the left, you'll see options for connecting to data. The option you choose depends on the output you created in the previous step.
3. Tableau Desktop will now load your clean, perfectly-shaped data into the Data Source pane. All the fields you defined and cleaned will be available.
4. Click on 'Sheet 1' and start building your reports! You can now drag and drop your measures and dimensions to create charts and dashboards without worrying about data quality issues.

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Quick Workflows & Useful Tips

While that's the standard workflow, Tableau includes a few features to tighten the connection between the two products and make your life easier.

Using "Preview in Tableau Desktop"

At any point while building your flow in Tableau Prep, you can see what your data will look like in Tableau Desktop. This is incredibly useful for spot-checking your work without having to run the entire flow.

• Right-click on any step in your flow.
• Select 'Preview in Tableau Desktop'.
• A new instance of Tableau Desktop will open with a temporary .hyper extract of your data at that specific point in the flow. This lets you quickly check calculations or chart a field to make sure your transformations are having the intended effect.

Editing a Flow from Tableau Desktop

What if you're working in a dashboard and realize you need to change something about the underlying data source? If that data source was created by a Tableau Prep flow, you don't have to go digging for the right file.

• In Tableau Desktop, go to the 'Data Source' tab.
• You'll see the name of the published data source or extract you're connected to.
• If it came from a Prep flow, you'll often see an 'Edit Flow' button. Clicking this will open the corresponding flow directly in Tableau Prep Builder, allowing you to make adjustments, re-run the output, and refresh the data in Tableau Desktop.

Automating with Prep Conductor

For reports that need to be updated regularly, manually running a flow and refreshing your data every day or week is tedious. If you're using Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server with the Data Management add-on, you can use Prep Conductor to schedule your flows.

This completely automates the process. You can set a flow to run every morning at 5 AM, for example. It will pull the latest data from the original source, apply all your cleaning steps, and update the published data source automatically. When your colleagues log into Tableau Desktop, they'll always be looking at fresh, clean data without anyone lifting a finger.

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Final Thoughts

While you can't open a Prep flow directly within Desktop, the two are designed as a powerful duo. By using Tableau Prep to handle all your cleaning and shaping and then outputting a pristine .hyper file or published data source, you set yourself up for fast, accurate, and stress-free analysis in Tableau Desktop. This workflow keeps your data prep distinct from your visualization, improving performance and organization.

The learning curve for tools like Tableau Prep and Desktop is significant, and the process of manually building out these flows can still be time-consuming. That's why we built Graphed. We automate the entire process by connecting directly to your sources — like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce — and letting you build dashboards using simple, natural language. Instead of building flows and configuring charts, you just ask for what you need (e.g., "Show me revenue by campaign for the last month"), and we instantly generate a live, interactive dashboard, giving you back hours to focus on strategy.