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Tableau Desktop Freezes When Using Crosstab to Excel Function With a Large Amount of Data


Published: 23 Aug 2023
Last Modified Date: 25 Aug 2023

Issue

Tableau Desktop freezes when exporting data with the Worksheet > Export > Crosstab to Excel function and using a very large data set.

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Generally, Tableau Desktop will not be responsive until Excel opens with the exported data. 

For small data in the view, it takes seconds to complete export and Tableau Desktop freezes for a short time.
But when the data is large in the view(e.g. 1 million rows of data), Tableau Desktop can freeze for over 1 hour.

Environment

  • Tableau Desktop

Resolution

Publish the workbook to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud and use the download function to download the crosstab data.

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Cause

Tableau Desktop stops functioning before the export process is complete when the time is excessive for Excel to build the file.
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