Visualize Data on a Mac

Hardware and technical stuff
1

On Windows I use Excel to make charts and graphs from a small Access database I use for my business. Now I am on a Mac and trying to figure out how to do the same things I’ve done in the past. I’ve got an instance of MySQL setup and am able to make it do most of the things I want to do as far as creating the database. But the big problem I’m having right now is trying to visualize the data. I’m no office guru but on Windows I did this by connecting Excel to my Access database and then create pivot tables. I should be able to do this on a Mac, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Excel needs a 3rd party ODBC driver (in Windows Microsoft ships with built-in drivers for connecting to Access). I went to a number of vendors last night and tried their products but was completely unsuccessful. Why is this so hard?

How can I do this on a Mac?

I’m not married to Excel. Is there some other product I can use to create charts and manipulate the data like I can in Excel?

If Excel is the best solution, is there a particular ODBC vendor people use? There are a number of them, but I just want one that will work relatively pain free. Is there step-by-step guide anywhere?

2

Annnnnnd… I just figured out the problem I was having with ODBC driver package from Actual. :)

There was a readme that had the solution (RTFM! - I needed to use an IP address instead of localhost), but I’m glad I posted here, because I’m still interested in how others are visualizing their data on the Mac.

Maybe there is something even better for me to use?

3

Have you taken a look at Tableau? I used this in my last job and it was very easy to connect to Excel reports and create different views and entire dashboards and it has a variety of other data connection options including Access and SQL databases. I’ve only used it on PC so I can’t speak to the Mac feature set but I assume there is parity or if not, it’s very close.