The debate between Tableau vs Excel poses a challenge for budding data scientists. While Excel has dominated the spreadsheet market for over 40 years, many people are unsure whether to continue using it or switch to Tableau.

 

It’s natural to feel dilemmatic by the choices available in data visualization tools. Excel is effective for data management. However, Tableau’s arrival raises questions about its competitiveness, making it hard to choose the best fit for your needs.

 

Acknowledging the unique strengths of both tools is essential to addressing this challenge. Excel is ideal for performing calculations and preparing data, while Tableau excels at visualizing complex datasets and presenting interactive reports.

 

Understanding each platform's advantages can effectively enhance your analytical capabilities.

 

Let us begin by quickly understanding What is Data visualization in brief.

Tableau vs Excel - Table of Contents
  • What Is Data Visualization?
  • Overview of Tableau
  • Overview of Excel
  • What are the Key Differences Between Tableau and Excel?
  • Tableau with Excel: How Both Can Work Together?
  • Tableau vs Excel: Who Wins the Race of Data Visualization?
  • Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Data Visualization?

Data visualization is a graphical presentation of data, enabling the identification of trends, patterns and insights.

 

It simplifies complex datasets, helping you make informed decisions. This visual approach allows you to understand and interpret the data easily, enhancing your ability to grasp important information efficiently.

 

Technology growth has made many data visualization tools to help you visualize easily. Tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Excel, Looker, Qlik and Infogram are prominent in the data visualization landscape.

 

However, I will compare two prominent data visualization solutions in the section below: Tableau and Excel.

 

Let’s begin by understanding both of them in brief.

Overview of Tableau

Tableau is a Business intelligence tool that helps you create and visualize interactive dashboards in a few clicks.

 

It sets correlations apart using color, size, labels and shapes, thus giving them an additional context to gain information.

 

In a nutshell, this BI solution lowers the knowledge barriers to allow you to visualize data even if you are a non-technical individual. To understand how Tableau benefits over Excel, it is important to understand its advantages and disadvantages.

What are the Advantages of Using Tableau?

Tableau, being a new-age data visualization solution, provides you bunch of benefits, some of which are mentioned below:

 

  • Tableau Dashboards has an outstanding reporting feature that offers convenient dashboard customization. However, this feature can only be used on mobile phones or laptops.
  • Further, Tableau can easily integrate with other technologies like Python or R to help you perform complex calculations.
  • Lastly, it can handle a large amount of data.

 After understanding Tableau let us have a brief about what is Excel?

Overview of Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application that performs calculations, statistical operations, data analysis and reporting. It stores data in rows and columns.

 

This data is usually managed in boxers made by the intersection of rows with columns as cells.

 

You can add tables, charts, graphics, and other visualizations depending on your specific needs to make the spreadsheet more informative and presentable.

 

Let’s understand the advantages of Excel to check out how it benefits over Tableau.

What are the Advantages of Using Excel?

Although Excel is one of the oldest data visualization tools, it still manages to provide some noteworthy advantages, which are as below:

 

  • Excel can analyze large amounts of data to identify trends to help you make an informed decision.
  • Moreover, it also performs tons of mathematical and logical functions easily.

Going ahead, let us check the difference between Tableau and Excel.

What are the Key Differences Between Tableau and Excel?

Tableau vs Excel has always been a famous battle when discussing the best data visualization tools.

 

Both these data visualization solutions have unique features, which we learn in this section.

 

The following table will help you understand the difference between Tableau and Excel to help you choose the best one.

 

Features

Tableau

Excel

Data Visualization

Designed for visualizing and exploring data

Offers some basic visualization features like charts and graphs.

Data Preparation

Limited, but it can connect with tons of data sources

Extensive, with data cleaning, transformation and modeling features

Data Analysis

It is more advanced with features like data blending and forecasting

It is basic but offers pivot tables and statistical functions

Collaboration

Allows you to collaborate on data analysis and real-time sharing

Limited collaboration possibilities with basic features like sharing and tracking changes

Cost

A paid software offering different pricing plans

It is a part of the Microsoft Office suite subscription

Learning Curve

The learning curve is steeper with some knowledge of data analysis needed

The knowledge curve is relatively low as it is widely used and familiar

Data Blending

You can easily blend data with other data sources

Data is limited to the workbook and does not allow for easy data blending

Scalability

Designed for large-scale data analysis and visualization

Offers limitations with large amounts of data and complex structure

Interactive Dashboards

Known for its ability to create highly customized and interactive dashboards.

Limited to creating static reports and charts.

Performance

Can manage large volumes of data and offer high performance

It can manage large datasets and perform complex calculations but is relatively slow.

Platform

Runs on Windows and Mac OS

Runs on Windows, Mac OS and web-based platforms

Data Security

Offers role-based and row-level security options

Offers limited data security options and is generally more vulnerable

Data Connectivity

Supports connectivity with a wide range of databases

Offers limited support for data connectivity

 

Can you use Tableau and Excel together after covering the difference between Tableau and Excel?

The simple answer: is yes. As a Data Migration consultant, I believe Tableau and Excel can offer great results if used together.

 

Check out the below section to know how to make them work together.

Tableau with Excel: How Both Can Work Together?

When used together, Tableau and Excel can be powerful tools. Below is a detailed look at how they can produce efficient results.

3 Quick Steps to Make Tableau and Excel Work Together

1. Connect To Excel

  • Open Tableau and Select Excel under the connect section.
  • Then, choose the desired Excel workbook and click open.
  • You can rename the data source for clarity on this page and select the specific sheets to analyze data.

2. Data Handling

  • Tableau easily connects with multiple Excel sheets.
  • Custom SQL queries can focus on specific data instead of the entire workbook.

3. Data Preparation

  • Tableau offers a Data Interpreter feature that helps you clean and optimize data for analysis by identifying sub-tables and removing problematic formatting.
  • Moreover, you can set options for how field names are treated to ensure that data is accurately presented in Tableau.

After learning how to use Tableau and Excel together, let's consider the advantages of this collaboration.

What are the Advantages of Using Tableau with Excel?

  • Tableau converts raw Excel data into visuals, making it easy to understand trends and insights without extensive reporting.
  • The drag-and-drop functionality of Tableau simplifies the creation of visual analysis that allows you to work on their findings.
  • Visuals created in Tableau can be easily shared across teams, encouraging collaboration and enabling stakeholders to access insights directly.

Lastly, let us check out the Common Use Cases of Tableau with Excel.

2 Common Uses of Using Tableau with Excel

  • You can merge multiple Excel sheets into one cohesive dataset with Tableau, thus helping in more complex analysis.
  • While Excel is widely used for data management, it has limitations regarding visualization capabilities. Tableau addresses these shortfalls by offering advanced analytical features to enhance decision-making.

Tableau vs Excel: Who Wins the Race of Data Visualization?

The selection of data analysis and visualization tools depends solely on your needs and situation. Excel is a low-cost, versatile tool that should be your first choice for working with small to medium-sized datasets.

 

Alternatively, Tableau should be the best choice if you’re looking for advanced visualization and want to integrate multiple data sources.

 

Choosing between Excel and Tableau for data visualization requires careful strategy and planning; if developing that plan feels challenging, consider seeking guidance from the best consultants for data visualization.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why do companies use Tableau?

Companies choose Tableau due to its intuitive interface and capability to generate insightful data. Tableau helps Data Scientists and Business Analysts enhance their company’s decision-making. Moreover, it facilitates efficient data loading, analysis and clear presentation for stakeholders. 

2. Does Tableau have a row limit like Excel?

No, unlike Excel, Tableau doesn’t have any limit for rows. Using Tableau aids professionals save their time and instead draw attention to the data that matters. Moreover, Tableau might have numerous advantages over Excel.

3. Which tool is better for data visualization - Tableau or Excel?

After using both Tableau and Excel, I found that Tableau is more suited to diverse, interactive and customizable data visualization. On the other hand, I thought that Excel provided more basic charts and may be suitable for straightforward data representation. In particular, Tableau excels at creating complex and interactive dashboards.

 

Choosing the right data visualization tool requires a thorough data visualization tools comparison to ensure the best fit for your specific needs.