Tableau vs Excel: When to use Tableau and when to use Excel

Key Takeaways

tablo has grown to become one of the most popular business intelligence tools in the entire world it is a bi software that allows non-technical users to visualize their data and work with it almost immediately lowering know-how barriers dramatically in the past business analysts needed the help of IT personnel who could assist them and gathering raw data and pre-processing it only then could business analysts start working on the visualization of such data the advent of tableau democratized this process and allowed bi analysts to be independent non-technical people can easily load data into the program and start playing with it tableaus Forte are meaningful intuitive visualizations and sometimes that's really valuable analysts are able to explore their data right away without spending too much time on numbers which provide limited insights and instead focus on data that matters this is why we can confidently say that tableau is an indispensable tool in the arsenal of most corporate business intelligence analysts data analysts and data scientists many people are uncertain about the difference between tableau and spreadsheet tools like Excel and that's a reasonable doubt until we point out they serve different purposes using tableau doesn't necessarily mean you can forget about Excel and vice versa while Excel is not as powerful or intuitive as tableau when it comes to data visualization tableau is not optimal when you would like to use it as a data creation tool although it has several database management functionalities the program isn't the best solution when you would like to perform multiple operations with your data before you start analyzing it moreover tableau isn't great for multi-layered calculations it is able to calculate in its own fields but it shouldn't be used as a spreadsheet tool for multi-layered calculations such as the preparation of a budget in Excel where tableau surpasses the competition is in data visualizations it is a very smart program that allows you to visualize data in a more powerful way compared to Excel so for example when you work with geographical data there is no way Excel could interpret the cells in your spreadsheet as a geographical location on the other hand tableau recognizes that and allows you to visualize such data and see how a variable is distributed geographically moreover tableau allows you to combine several types of charts and build up meaningful dashboards that are truly interactive and facilitate additional analysis once you visualize your data you can easily dig deeper and explore its granularity finding the reason for unusual spikes or investigating certain trends even novice tableau users would be able to save a significant amount of time if they transfer their pre-designed existing Excel dashboards to tableau uploading new data and updating visuals is more rapid in tableau therefore we can agree that a competent analyst needs both excel and tableau given that they serve different purposes tableau is superior when it comes to visuals and dashboards and Excel is a spreadsheet tool we need in order to perform multi-layered calculations in the same way a combat soldier carries a rifle and a pistol at the same time and uses them under different circumstances a business analyst should know how to work with both excel and tableau and apply each of them when needed