Connecting to SharePoint-Based Excel File

Published: 30 Jul 2014
Last Modified Date: 28 Jan 2021

Question

How to connect to Excel files hosted on SharePoint.

Environment

Tableau Desktop
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Excel files

Answer

You can connect to Microsoft Excel files hosted on SharePoint using the Microsoft Excel data connection in Tableau Desktop. For more information, see Microsoft Excel.

In order to connect to a file hosted on SharePoint, you will need to verify the following:

Store the file on the SharePoint local file system. Files stored in the SharePoint content database don't have physical file paths and cannot be accessed by Tableau Desktop.
On Windows, use the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path, or network path, to connect to the data source. For example, connect to a path that looks similar to \\servername\sharename\directory\filename. For more information about displaying a Sharepoint library as a UNC path, see this article UNC Path Naming for files stored on SharePoint.
On a Mac, you will need to use OneDrive to sync the files. For more information, see Add and sync shared folders to OneDrive at Microsoft support.

Additional Information

A UNC path is the full name and directory path of a network resource, you can obtain it by right-clicking a file in Explorer > Properties > General tab, and the UNC path will be available in the Location section. The UNC path will follow a standard syntax such as: \\servername\sharename\directory\filename syntax, where servername is the name of the server, sharename is the name of the shared resource and directory\filename is the directory path to the file.

In Windows, the UNC path is often referred to as the network path.