I am writing a short series about tips and tricks in Tableau. The three-part series will cover:
- General Tableau tips (this blog)
- Tips and tricks for displaying things in Tableau
- How to find lost items (such as hidden headers) in Tableau
I hope you find something of use within these pages :).
I am writing this from a “newbie” perspective, thinking back to all the things I used to do and the shortcuts that I wish I knew when I began. You might have been using Tableau for a while now, but there is a chance that some of these might even be new to you. Let me know your favourites or ones that I have missed in the comments.
I have split this blog into three sections:
- comprehension (skip this if you have been working with Tableau for a while),
- organisation and
- efficiency.
Tableau Comprehension
Know your data and your viz
It is important to understand the visualisations you are creating. Looking at the amount of marks displayed in a visualisation is a good way to be sure that your visualisation is displaying exactly what you expected. You can see this information in the bottom left corner of Tableau.
Understand Blue and Green in Tableau – Discrete (blue) vs continuous (green)
What does blue and green mean in Tableau? Some people say that blue is for “dimensions” and green is for “measures”. Though this is normally the case, this is not actually strictly always true. Blue is always used to represent discrete data and this data is usually a dimension. While green is always used to represent continuous data, which is usually a measure. Because of this, people also tend to conflate discrete with dimensions and continuous with measures. As this topic can’t be properly covered in a few sentences, I have actually written two blogs on the topic. If you need to learn about what continuous and discrete mean, then read this blog first. If you already know what discrete and continuous data is, read this blog about how to use discrete and continuous data in Tableau.
Get to know the icons and understand data types
Before getting started in Tableau, it is important to understand what you are seeing. Understanding the small icons next to each field will help you understand what you are dealing with (and help you troubleshoot or change data types if required). If you don’t know about data types, I have written a blog on this. Before you read my blog on Data Types, please know that it is from a more general data perspective, rather than a Tableau perspective and therefore splits numbers into integers, floats and doubles. This is irrelevant to Tableau, but relevant to several other programs and software which use datatypes.
The basic (and most common) data type icons are:
Abc icon is used for strings.
# is for numbers. Please note that some fields that are entirely numbers may be converted to and displayed as a string. You may want to convert ID number to string for example, as this usually represents a discrete dimension and you don’t accidentally want it to be aggregated (summed up, for example).
A small globe is representative of geographical data.
A small calendar is representative of date, while 
a small calendar with an even smaller clock in the bottom right corner is used for date time data.
A miniature histogram is used for bins.
T|F is used for boolean data.
Any of the above icons with a small = to the left of it is a calculated field.
Any of the above icons with a small paperclip to the left is a group.
A miniature Venn diagram, is representative of a set.
A small hierarchy graph is representative of a hierarchy.
If you would like to know all the possible icons, please read Tableau’s Visual Cues and Icons in Tableau Desktop – Tableau.
Organisation
Create and use hierarchies
An important thing to do when starting out on any Tableau project, is to organise your data a clearly as possible. Creating hierarchies (where relevant) is a great way to do this. A great example of this is the way that Superstore data has grouped “Category”, “Subcategory” and “Product Name” into a hierarchy. Another classic example is grouping geographical data such as city, state, country into a hierarchy.
To create a hierarchy you simply right click on a pill in the left side data sidebar, go down to “hierarchy” and select “Create Hierarchy”. You can then give the hierarchy grouping a name and drag any other relevant fields into the collection. Be sure to drag them in a logical order (largest to smallest) as this will be the order Tableau uses for drilling down.
Colour code your sheets and dashboards
On the topic of organisation, be sure to label your sheets, dashboards and calculations clearly. You can also colour code your sheets and dashboards by right clicking on the sheet/dashboard, going to colour and then selecting a colour.
Hide sheets before presenting or publishing
Did you know you can hide all sheets that are used in a dashboard? This can make your workbook much cleaner and should be done before any kind of presentation. Simply right-click on the dashboard and select “Hide All Sheets”.
Efficiency
Drag and place fields efficiently
Copy an existing pill with Ctrl+drag:
You can hold down the control button and drag a pill in an existing visualisation in order to copy it. This is handy when you want to use the same pill in several places – for both colour and text, for example.
Drag fields directly over the required mark:
When I first started working with Tableau, I found it intuitive to drag pills to the rows and column shelves, but less so with the marks card. After experimenting somewhat with the “Show Me” panel (top right), I noticed that certain pills were also being used in the marks card. At first, when I wanted to create my own visualisations and add pills to the marks card, I would drag the pill into the marks card and it would automatically give this pill the “detail” option. I would then click on the detail icon next to the pill and change it to the one I actually wanted it to be (usually text or colour). I wish I had known sooner that I could simply drag my pill directly onto one of the marks options and it would immediately be the type of mark that I wanted.
Replace pills by dragging directly over the existing pill:
Don’t bother dragging pills off the shelf before dragging new ones onto it. You can also save time by replacing a pill directly. Do this by dragging the new pill directly over the one you want to replace. When doing this correctly, you will see that the existing pill gets a fine black line around it, this means that it will be replaced by the new field you are dragging in.
Swap rows and columns button 
This one is very basic, but if you’ve never noticed the button, you’ll find it a joy to use. I recommend is using the “swap rows and columns” button, rather than manually dragging the pills around between shelves.
Select how data displays/aggregates straight away using right-click+drag
When dragging a field from the left data sidebar into the visualisation you can hold down the right mouse button. This allows you to select the way you want the data to show. It is most relevant for date data as this defaults to discrete, however we often want to show it in a continuous way and at the granularity we want (months instead of years or quarters for example). It is also handy if you would prefer to use a different aggregation to the SUM() default.
Set a default aggregation for measures
The above tip is great if you want to display the measure in different ways for different visualisations. If, however, you know that you always want to display a measure with the same aggregation every time then you can set your own default aggregation. To do this, right click on the measure in the data panel, and go down to “Default Properties”, then select “Aggregation”, then you can select how you would like the data to aggregate every time you place it in the visualisation.
Set a default format for numbers
Similar to the above point, you can also set a default format for a number. Say you want a number to always display as a percentage. Instead of changing it for every visulisation, you can set the default on the field directly in the data panel. To do this, right click on the field, select “Default Properties” and then select “Number Format”. This will open a window where you can set the number to display exactly as you would like.
What are your favourite Tableau tips?