I really don’t like Halloween and I really don’t like video content, so I thought for today I’d do both. Here are 21 Tableau Tricks and Treats ranging from beginner to maybe Intermediate +
1. Right click on the marks, rows or columns shelf to create a calculated field that exists only in that worksheet
2. Create information icons with explanation in the hover help guide the user by creating sheets with only an icon or an image, and then tool (show dashboard)
3. Right click on a field and click default properties > number format and you can set to a currency or percentage so you don’t have to change it every time you use it in a view. You can set default aggregations here as well.
4. Right click and drag fields onto your view to pre-determine how they display (oops, didn’t get on video, use your imagination)
5. Copy portions of a calculated field and drag them onto the view (great for troubleshooting)
6. Hold Ctrl and drag a calculation from the pill to anywhere else to copy it – including into your field list to create a new calc field.
7. If you’re using measure values on colour, right click the measure values pill and select individual legends per measure. This lets you set a different legend for each measure. But it can get psychedelic so be careful.
8. In a legend, double click a colour to go to the customization GUI
9. To reduce the colour noise, you can use advanced customization to reduce the impact of outliers and stepped legends that reduce the number of total colours.
10. In the toolbar, click analysis, view data. It will show you all of the data in the current worksheet. A quicker way than highlighting all the points and right clicking view data.
11. If you need to export a measure name by measure values table, it will export as a cross tab and not a table (not like it looks in Tableau). To alleviate this, multi select the measures (ctrl + click) and drag them onto the rows. Then multi select again, right click and select dimension. Now you’ll see that the export formats as a table.
12. Drag the middle of a range filter to maintain the range but change the end points.
13. Have dynamic colouring in text or tooltip by creating multiple if statement calculated fields, that return the desired value, one for “bad” and one for “good” each without an else statement. Set them each in the tool tip, colour the bad one Red and the good one Green. Only one will ever show up at a time.
14. Right click on a date, format and scroll down to custom and pick the perfect date format.
15. Use map layers to add street or satellite details to a map.
16. To dynamically highlight only one dimension from a group, create a parameter that has all of the dimension options and then a calculated field of Parameter = Dimension. Set that field on colour, and click a bright colour for true and a bland colour for false. Order the legend so that true is on top.
17. You can set a password on a dashboard using a parameter and a calculated field the verifies the Parameter is set to a specific word.
18. Use a Count Distinct of dimensions in a view to swap create a dynamic label that shows either a specific item or lexicon for multiple items, based on filters. IF the count distinct is equal to 1 THEN use Attrtibute on the dimension to show the specific dimension, ELSE show “All Products/Teams/Cities”.
19. On Startup hover across recent files to preview contents by worksheet.
20. Ctrl and click multiple worksheets and right click, select copy. You can and paste these worksheets within a workbook to duplicate, or from one workbook to another. It will even bring the datasource with it.
21. The 21st trick is that there isn’t a 21st trick.