# Column reordering enhancements for Prep - New in Tableau 2022.2

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2022-07-01
- **Format:** Video · 8 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data prep
- **Tools:** Excel; Snowflake; Tableau (prep)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/column-reordering-enhancements-for-prep-new-in-tableau-2022-2
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojf3h5BXiGs

I walk through the new column reordering feature in Tableau Prep 2022.2, where the column order you set inside the product is finally preserved in your output. Connected to a Snowflake sample source, I demonstrate reordering columns and outputting to Excel, and I discover along the way why the sorting only sticks reliably when your output is set to create the table rather than replace the data.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau Prep 2022.2 now preserves the column ordering you set in the product when writing output, a feature requested in the community three years prior with 1,400 votes.
- You can reorder columns either by dragging them in the data grid view or in the field summary view.
- To make a changed column order overwrite an existing file's sorting, set the output to 'Create table' rather than 'Replace data', as 'Replace data' keeps existing columns and only refills the data.
- Newly added outputs persist your current sorting, but pointing at an existing file can pull through that file's previously saved column order.
- The feature supports Excel, CSV and Hyper files, plus Google BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake and published data sources, but not SQL Server or Oracle.

## Chapters

- 0:00 What's new with column ordering
- 1:25 Reordering columns and outputting to Excel
- 3:02 Checking the preserved sorting
- 4:18 Why the sorting didn't stick
- 5:41 Create table vs replace data
- 6:41 Supported file types and databases

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/column-reordering-enhancements-for-prep-new-in-tableau-2022-2

---
just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena