Text tables are a common request; often dashboard viewers want to see the rows of data to verify, which in turns builds trust. This is especially true for organizations moving away from traditional spreadsheets to interactive and automated dashboards. Thankfully, there are several techniques that can elevate text tables from good to great, especially when it comes to formatting Sub-Total and Grand Total rows.  Read on to learn three quick & easy techniques.

Rename the header

Click on the Total or Grand Total row and select “Format” from the drop-down menu.  This opens a formatting pane on the left, which allows you to type in a custom header for your Total and/Grand Total rows.  In this example, I’ve renamed Total as Sub-Total, and Grand Total as Total (All Categories). 

Highlight with Color

To draw attention to the total rows, you can customize the shading. To help with comprehension, you can select one color for Sub-Totals, and a different, contrasting color for Grand Totals.

Bold Fonts

Finally, a tried & true method to draw attention to the total rows? Bold the font.

Text tables may not have the pizzaz of a scatterplot or Sankey, but they can still be visually appealing.

Happy Vizzing, folks!

I’m a note-taker — it’s my go-to method for learning and organizing my thoughts. I write to do lists too, but that’s another post. : ) This skill has come in handy recently when I needed to reference a complex Tableau dashboard build from a few months ago. Relying on my memory is sketchy (age, related perhaps?)  – but relying on my notetaking never fails me.  So where does one put notes in a Tableau workbook, so as not to clutter the sheets or dashboards?

If the notes are somewhat lengthy, I recommend utilizing the little-known feature “Show Caption”.  By selecting this from the Worksheet drop-down menu, a box appears at the bottom of your sheet. Tableau automatically populates it with a description of the fields brought into the view.  You can keep this description, or you can Edit the caption to modify it or add your own notes. 

For the workbook I mentioned earlier, I wanted to document the steps I followed to build a drilldown using set actions, so I decided to edit the caption, clear the default description, and add my own. To edit, simply right-click (Control-click on a Mac) in the Caption area and select “Edit Caption”.

This opens an editor dialog box. In this space you can add/remove text and set formatting.

Select Ok once you’ve completed your edits, and the revised caption will appear at the bottom of your sheet.

Viola! Detailed notes at the bottom of your sheet for your future reference, or a delightful surprise when a colleague opens a workbook previously built by you. 

One final note — Captions do not appear by default when sheets are added to dashboards, making them a perfect “behind-the-scenes” spot for notes. Of course, if you wish to display them on a dashboard, it’s a simple as accessing the drop-down menu on the wireframe and checking “Show Caption”.

Happy note-taking! Your future self will thank you.

In this post I’d like to shine a spotlight on Tableau’s “hide data” feature. It’s a hidden gem 🙂 and deserves a shout-out. This feature works beautifully when using Quick Table Calculations such as Percent Difference. Let’s take a closer look.

In this example, the goal is to show monthly sales for the last three months and the % change month-over-month.  To do this, bring the Sales and Date fields into the view and use a continuous date filter to show only the three months desired.

Next, bring a duplicate of Sales into the view and add the Quick Table Calculation for Percent Difference…but notice it is only showing the % change for the last two months, and not the first month in our view. Why? The view doesn’t have any data in the month prior to reference in the table calculation.   Here’s where the fun begins.

Instead of using a continuous date filter, write a calculation that shows only the last three months, and place it on the rows shelf. This returns False for all months prior to the last three months, and True for the last three months.

Next, we need to Hide the False rows. To do this, right-click (control-click on Mac) on the word False in any row and use the menu to select Hide. This tells Tableau to keep the data in the view but hide it from the visual.

Once we’ve completed this step, our view now shows the Percent Difference for ALL three months.  

Finally, we don’t need to show the date filter calculation on rows, so we can uncheck Show Header by accessing the dropdown menu on the blue pill.

Presto! We’ve accomplished our goal to show only the last three months of sales, and the % change month-over-month for all three months.

If you’d like to download the workbook, click on this link to access it on my Tableau Public profile page. Happy Vizzing!