Using Desktop excel file as Live data Source for Tableau Server

Thanks Jonathan Drummey for the steps

The order of setting up a live Tableau Server connection to a file data source such as Excel, Access, or text file via a workbook (in other words, *not* using Tableau Data Server) is:

0) If Microsoft Office is not installed on Tableau Server and you are connecting to Excel or Access files, you will need a driver from the list in Drivers & Activation | Tableau Software. Note that this requirement will go away in many cases for Excel files in Tableau 8.2 that can use the new Excel connection type in 8.2.

1) Set up your Tableau Server so that the user Tableau Server runs as has access to wherever you are putting the Excel, Access, or text files to use as data sources.

2) In Tableau Desktop always use the UNC path like \\localhost\pathname rather than C:\pathname. If you didn't do that at the beginning, you can always edit the connection later, which is better than replacing the data source because if you do the latter then you'll lose colors & aliases.

3) When publishing to server, make sure you *uncheck* "Include External Files". If you don't do this, you'll be scratching your head later when the data doesn't update. If you didn't do step 2 or step 1, when you publish as Tableau is rendering the viz in the preview window Tableau will spit errors at you saying it can't display the viz. Note that Tableau only does that for the data sources required for the viz, so if you have data sources A and B, and the preview viz uses A but B isn't available, the publishing will work fine and you won't get the error until someone on Tableau Server tries to access a worksheet or dashboard that uses data source B.