Sometimes it is easier to just paste data from the clipboard than pasting it to Excel or CSV files and then importing them again in Tableau. Tableau does provide a quick import method from the clipboard.
Let's use the Titanic dataset that we used in the Connecting to the text files recipe. The file is at http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/pub/Main/DataSets/titanic.txt.
Once you have determined that the Titanic dataset file is on your local drive, perform the following steps to copy the data to Tableau using a clipboard:
While copying data from the clipboard, Tableau uses tab as the default separator of data. This causes improper import of data when the data is separated by other delimiters such as a comma. You can easily correct this problem by editing the connection to the clipboard file saved in Windows' temporary folder.
If you created visualizations based on the data from the clipboard and you need to regularly update this visualization, you will find the Tableau online article, Editing Pasted Data, in the Knowledge Base section at the following link:
http://kb.tableausoftware.com/articles/knowledgebase/editing-pasted-data
This article explains how to save the data source of the clipboard and modify the data source.