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11 changes: 9 additions & 2 deletions explore-analyze/visualize/lens.md
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# Lens [lens]

**Lens** is Kibana's drag-and-drop visualization builder. It lets you create charts without writing queries: You drag fields onto the canvas, and Kibana suggests the best visualization types for your data.

To create a visualization, drag the data fields you want to visualize to the workspace, then **Lens** uses visualization best practices to apply the fields and create a visualization that best displays the data.
These fields come from your data indices stored in Elasticsearch. When you bring data into Elasticsearch, like logs, metrics, or business data, each piece of information becomes a field: timestamps, user names, error codes, sales amounts, and so on.

Lens doesn't directly look into your {{es}} indices. You first need to specify a [data view](/explore-analyze/find-and-organize/data-views.md) that tells Kibana which indices to look at. When you open Lens and select a data view, you see all the fields from that data as a list you can drag and drop to build visualizations.

:::{tip}
If you collected data using one of the {{kib}} [ingest options](/manage-data/ingest.md), uploaded a file, or added sample data, you likely have a {{data-source}} created automatically, and can start exploring your data. If not, you must create one yourself.
:::

With **Lens**, you can:

Expand All @@ -26,7 +33,7 @@ With **Lens**, you can:
* Add annotations and reference lines.


### Create visualizations [create-the-visualization-panel]
## Create visualizations [create-the-visualization-panel]

If you’re unsure about the visualization type you want to use, or how you want to display the data, drag the fields you want to visualize onto the workspace, then let **Lens** choose for you.

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