Prepare room—viewing, cleaning, and manipulating data

Before creating charts, use the tools in the Prepare room to view and prepare data.

The Prepare room displays data for the connected data source and is divided into three areas.
Table 1: Areas of the Prepare room

Area

Description

Data pane

The central area that displays data in rows and columns (Grid view) or in facets (Facets view). It is where you view data and can apply the following tools (when available) to column values:
  • Change Aggregation
  • Sort
  • Filter
  • Display Formatting
  • Convert To Number
  • Convert To Date
  • Convert To Text
  • Create a measure
  • Create a time hierarchy
  • Create a geographic hierarchy
  • Create a custom hierarchy
  • Rename
  • Remove
  • Merge the column
  • Hide column
  • Fit to content
  • Create Calculated Dimension
  • Duplicate

Measures and Dimensions panel

A panel located to the left of the data area that lists the measures and dimensions the application detected in the data. Use tools on the Measures and Dimensions panel to define and to edit measures and to create time and geography hierarchies.

Manipulation Tools panel

A panel located to the right of the data area, where you can edit text and convert values in a cell or column of data, create new columns with formulas, and rename, duplicate, and remove columns.