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Tableau: Highlighting bars in a chart without using calculations

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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First plot your chart, in this instance I have used Sample-Superstore data to plot profit per sub-category in each category.  For this I dragged the Profit (measure) to columns and category and sub-category (dimensions) to rows in that order.

Drag Profit to colour on the marks card and sort sub-category in descending order.

Click on the colour tab in marks card and click on Edit Colours…

In the Edit Colours window, tick the stepped colour check box and choose 2 steps.

Double click on the colours if you wish to change the colours.

Click on << Advanced tab and tick the centre check box and type in 0 and click ok.

If you want labels to appear, tick show marks check box in the Label tab on marks card.

In a glimpse we can see that Bookcases and Tables in Furniture category and Supplies in Office Supplies category have not been profitable.

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