What is Extract Filter in Tableau ?
Extract filter in Tableau is used to filter relevant data which you want to filter. Extract Filter is a type of filter that allows you to filter data in an extract mode, which is a subset of data that is saved as a separate file. Extract filters help you reduce the size of your data and improve the performance by extracting only the data which you need.
Lets understand with few examples to illustrate how extract filters work:
Suppose You have a large sales dataset for the past five years of data. However, you only need to analyze the dataset for the last one year. Becasue once you will use only one year of data the performance of many functions and lookup will work faster on small dataset and for this you can create an extract the data and apply an extract filter to only include data for the last one year. This will significantly reduce the size of the dataset and make it faster to work for you.
Key features of Extract Filter in tableau:
- You can directly apply filter in data source which will reduce the size of data
- Extract filter create the small subset of data which is used from the original data source
- Once yo will apply Extract filter you will not able to change filter inside the Tableau sheet, you need to click on data source tab and change the filters.
- With apply of Extract filter, data connection will not remain live connection
- With Extract filter it will create extract data source with .hyper extension name.
- Extract filters, can improve the performance of your workbook and complex graphs
Step wise guide to apply Extract filter:
1. Click on the data source tab and then Extract button (on the top right side of Tableau desktop)
2. It will ask you to save data source as “.hyper” extension format which will convert your live data into extract data.
3. Now click on edit button as shown below image. It will open the “extract data” window for Filter options
4. Then click on “Add..” button which will show the all dimensions/ fields name.
5. Then you need to select any one of the dimension/ field as per your requirement. Now we have selected “Sales Channel” field to apply filter on “Online” sale channel. Now click Ok button.
6. Then it will apply filter on “Online” sales channel
7. Once you will start design graphs like bra chart, combined chart etc.. in Tableau Sheet it will show you only “online” sales channel (as show below image)
8. If you need to change filter then you need to go to data source tab and from there you can change the filter.
Extract filters can be very useful in Tableau when you are working with large datasets or when you only need to analyze a subset of your data. By using extract filters, you can improve the performance of your workbook and make it easier to work with your data.