Imagine this if you will; you’ve created a sweet viz and published it to Tableau Public, then a few month later you get more data to add to that viz, but you can’t find the original Excel file.
So what do you do?
You download the viz, export the data to CSV and then start copying and pasting column by column the new data because when you export from Tableau Public, the column order gets changed to alphabetic order.
I ran into this last night and discovered an awesome feature in Excel that I didn’t know existed.
First, select all you columns and rows by clicking the upper left point of your Excel sheet. Next, click Sort & Filter > Custom Sort. Ensure the My List has Headers is checked, then click options at the bottom of the dialog box. Here you can change the orientation of your sort!
Click OK twice and your columns rearrange in alphabetic order! A quick double check to make sure that it matches the original data source, a quick copy and paste and you are on your way.