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How to Create a Custom Shape Palette for Tableau

This post was originally published on The Data School blog between 2018 and July 2025, before our program was renamed to MIP’s Analytics Career Accelerator. References throughout this article to “The Data School” or “DS” all refer to what is now MIP’s Analytics Career Accelerator. The program, its people, and its commitment to launching outstanding analytics careers remain the same – just under a new name.

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In this blog, I will talk about how to create a custom shape palette for tableau.

Before we start, let’s have a look what are “shapes” in tableau. In the drop-down menu in the mark card, select “Shapes”, then click “Shape Card”, and some shapes that come with Tableau will appear.

Occasionally, you’ll come across scenarios in Tableau where you need more than the stock shapes that Tableau provides.

 

Find the desired shape

 

First, you have to find the shape you want and save it to the computer (I normally use png and jpg), I will use the fast-food company logo as the example.

 

Put them into the shape folder

 

To create your own custom shape palette, you can open your file explorer and go to Documents → My Tableau Repository → Shapes and then create a new folder to house your images.

Reload the Palette

 

When you are ready to use those shapes in Tableau you can select “Reload Shapes” from the shape editor and the new folder with the shapes you added will show up as an option.

Put them into Dashboard and add filters

 

Once done, you can put the custom shape worksheet into your dashboard and add filter/set action to change the shape icons.

 

This is the way to create a custom shape palette for tableau, hope you find this blog helpful.

 

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