Yes, we can place an excel file in a shared location, but for better performance, we should use extract.
Tableau allows you to connect to Excel files and use them as a data source for your visualizations. However, Tableau doesn’t directly store or host Excel files. Instead, it connects to the data in real-time or imports a copy of the data into Tableau for analysis.
If you want to use an Excel file as a data source in Tableau, you can place the Excel file in a shared location accessible by the Tableau Desktop or Tableau Server. This shared location could be a network drive, a shared folder, or a cloud storage solution like Dropbox or OneDrive. Once the file is in a shared location, you can connect to it from Tableau and create visualizations based on the data.
Remember that the Excel file should be in a format that Tableau supports, and the location should be accessible by the Tableau environment you are using (Desktop or Server).