Often data needs to be transformed before it can be loaded into Tableau Desktop, in the Tableau world, Prep is the tool to do that task. But Tableau Desktop also allows you to do some basic data preparation itself and this might be enough to do the task. So let’s take a look at two data transformation options in Tableau Desktop, Splits and Pivots.

Splitting Columns

When you select a column in the data source sheet, you can right-click on a column and select either “Split” or “Custom Split”, the first option is guessing how it should be split, in the second option, you can define the separator and number of columns to create yourself (Fig.1). This could be leveraged, for example, to get the last name of a superstore customer.

Pivoting Columns

One of the most common tasks in data preparation is to pivot the data. If you select multiple columns in the data source sheet and right-click on them, you can pivot these columns. Since this is so often required, doing it in Tableau Desktop is a nice and quick solution.

The transformation options are also available from the data pane by selecting a field, right-clicking and choosing the “Transform” option.