Loading Data Files in Tableau Desktop

The instructions on this page are based on Tableau Desktop Professional Edition 2020.4 and Tableau Desktop Public Edition 2020.4.

Supported Formats

Tableau Desktop can't load the compressed CSV data files (csv.gz) directly but it can load the CSVs once they’ve been extracted.

Download the Data Files

Download and save the data files to a suitable location. In the examples that follow, the data has been saved to C:\data.

Although you could load data files directly from the data file URLs, this is not recommended because you may quickly hit usage limits or incur additional costs. We always recommend saving the files locally or to cloud storage first using the Open Data Blend Dataset UI, Open Data Blend Dataset API, or Open Data Blend for Python.

Extracting the CSV Data Files

Use a decompression tool such as 7-Zip to extract compressed CSV data file to a suitable location.

Loading CSV Data Files

You can use the below steps as a guide on how you can load extracted CSV data files in Tableau Desktop.

In the Connect pane under the 'To a File' section, click 'Text File'

In the Open File dialog, navigate to the location where you extracted the CSV data file to then select it and click 'Open'.

Click 'Update Now' to see a preview of the data.

Using Tableau Desktop for Data Analysis

Guidance on how to analyse data in Tableau Desktop is beyond the scope of this documentation.

You may find the following helpful:

• Tableau Desktop and Web Authoring Help

• Tableau Public How-to Videos