Tableau Packaged Workbooks and Excel 2007 Data Sources

Some Tableau workbooks are too good to keep to yourselves and you’ll want to share them with other people! Note the following issue, however… if you send a Tableau packaged workbook that has been produced with an Excel 2007 source, it is worthwhile double-checking which version of MS Office your recipient is using.

Looking at the Tableau website, Office Excel 2003 users will experience problems if they try to open a Tableau packaged workbook that has been produced in Office Excel 2007. These individuals are missing specific Office 2007 drivers, which mean that they won’t be able to open the workbook. The website specifically says:

If you are sharing packaged workbooks that contain Microsoft Excel or Access 2007 data sources, the people opening the workbook must either have Microsoft Excel and Access 2007 or the Office 2007 Data Connectivity Components installed on their machines. The data connectivity components are available on the Tableau Download Drives page.

To download drivers and resolve the issue, the recipients will need to download specific office drivers from the Microsoft website. These drivers amount to about 25 Mb, and the instructions to download them can be found here:

1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7554F536-8C28-4598-9B72-EF94E038C891&displaylang=en and press the ‘download’ button.
   
2. When it asks you to ‘run’ or ‘save’, please ‘save’ the download onto the computer.
   
3. Once you’ve completed the download, please navigate to the file you’ve just downloaded, and double-click on the downloaded file. I believe it is called AccessDatabaseEngine.exe, double-click on it, and press ‘run’.
   
4. Reboot the computer ( just in case!)
   
5. Once you have downloaded and installed the drivers by yourselves, you can then open the packaged workbooks, produced in Excel 2007.
   

I hope that this helps!