Ten New Tableau Tricks I Learned at the 2024 Conference
The Tableau Conference (#Data24) is the highlight of the year for the #DataFam. For me, it’s all about the tips & tricks sessions. I always learn something new, even after a dozen years using the product!
This year did not disappoint, with three sessions broadcast on SalesForce+ during the virtual conference and several others available online afterward. Here were some amazing new techniques that I learned; thanks a million to the the awesome presenters for sharing their knowledge.
How to Do Cool Stuff in Tableau, Ken Flerlage and Kevin Flerlage
Everyone’s favorite identical twin visionaries were back this year with a crop of great tips. New to me:
- Alternative Jitter Option (11:15): Many people use the undocumented RAND() to create a jitterplot, but this isn’t available in all data sources, and it causes the points to move around every time the viz recalculates. A simpler pseudo-random method is to use AVG(COS([Id Number])), which will generate values between -1 and 1.
![Dot plot with values jittered up and down by using AVG(COS([Id Number]))](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*S0VFF7qCTg_FKnjJnrO6SA.png)
2. Quick Up/Down Triangles (16:45): It looks cool to put triangles to show increases/decreases. This doesn’t require a separate calculation! Open the formatting for the number, and use the Custom option. In Custom formatting, the setup is
Positive number format; Negative number format; Zero format
So you can copy/paste the triangles from a site like https://www.alt-codes.net/triangle-symbols directly into the formatting dialogue box.
3. Quick Colored Dots (19:20): I’m used to using the color shelf to make colored indicator dots. But some Unicode characters like the “Large Red Circle” have a color as part of their definition. You can copy and paste these directly into your calculations from a site like https://unicode-explorer.com/list/geometric-shapes.
Mic Drop: Tremendous Tableau Tips, Heidi Kalbe, Tore Levinson, Annabelle Rincon
Next up were three Tableau whizzes, each of whom showed me some amazing features and techniques!
4. Sheet Description (17:30): I had forgotten about this feature, and it’s going to make QA and documentation so much easier. In the main menu, go to Worksheet > Describe Sheet (or use Ctrl-E) for beautifully formatted documentation that explains how the sheet is set up, shows sample values, and gives all the calculations (!).
5. Excel-Style Color Formatting on Tables (28:35): Warning before I show you this tip: Tableau is not Excel! Please steer people toward using vizzes, not crosstabs. But in the business world, there will be some users who insist on the Excel-style format, then get mad that Tableau can’t format it like Excel can.
For years, I have told people “A Tableau crosstab can’t custom-color a individual columns”… but I was wrong. Put Measure Values on the Color Shelf, click the arrow on it, and choose “Use Separate Legends”.
For each legend, use a custom diverging palette. If you want red negative numbers, set the left side to red, right to black, and center to 0. If you want all numbers to just be black, set both sides to black.
As a bonus tip, you can also custom color the background by changing the Mark Type to Square and using the same two-color diverging palette, this time with white if you don’t want a side highlighted.
6. Undo Mark Selection (34:15): Heidi created a pagination effect with controls that drove parameter actions. As a side effect, though, the user has to double-click a mark the second time to unselect and reselect it. I never understood how to avoid this.
She explained that there’s a weird “magic trick” with a filter action that works around this behavior. It’s documented a few places on the web, such as on this site by Donna Coles: https://www.biztory.com/blog/how-to-stop-marks-being-highlighted-when-clicked-in-tableau.
Key things that she noted: Target Sheets needs to refer the sheet itself, not the sheet within the dashboard (note the different icons below). [True] and [False] are custom calculations that just have those two hard-coded values.
8 Ways to Elevate Your Text Tables, Eric Balash and Cait Sojka
You cannot avoid making text tables, but you can jazz them up and make them more visual. In addition to also demonstrating the Excel-style Color Formatting, Eric also showed off this easy trick.
7. Highlight Bars Behind Metrics (21:55): These look very slick and are pretty simple to set up. You can double-click the axis and type “1.0” as a placeholder. Then edit the axis to a Fixed Start of -0.5 and a Fixed End of 1.5, which adds some white padding to the sides. Add your desired measure to the Text shelf. Then create an IF/THEN statement to categorize the performance, add it to the Color shelf, and set up your colors.
At the Speed of Iron Viz: Tips for Faster Builds, Lisa Trescott
2021 Iron Viz Champion Lisa Trescott figured out how to build vizzes fast, and she now uses these time-saving techniques in her daily work. Most of her tips involve using Tableau functionality that designers built in but that many people (myself included) do not know about.
8. Copy/Paste Worksheet Formatting (6:05): How have I never used this option? Right-click on a tab at the bottom of the workbook, select “Copy Formatting”, and then right-click a second tab and choose “Paste Formatting”. Voila; the fonts, line settings, etc. all carry over. You can even paste formatting into a different workbook! Lisa suggests setting up a template worksheet, coloring it differently, and using it to copy/paste consistent formatting for the rest of your worksheets.
9. Replace Pills Without Losing Formatting and Sorting (9:25): I usually drag and drop one pill directly over another to replace it. Works fine… except you have to redo the sorting and formatting. Instead, if you double-click the pill to edit it in-line, you can type in the new field without blowing away your old work.
10. Edit Calculations and Tooltips in Dashboards (30:55 and 37:10): How many times have I left a dashboard to go back to a worksheet, changed a calc or a tooltip, and navigated back to the dashboard to resume my work? Turns out I didn’t need to leave the dashboard at all! In the main menu, Analysis > Edit Calculated Field will allow you to open any calculation in the workbook. And Worksheet > Tooltip will allow you to edit the tooltip for the selected worksheet. (Be careful: If you have tooltips on multiple measures, it edits the “All” tooltip on the marks card, replacing the individual tooltips.)
Believe it or not, I haven’t even gotten through all the tips and tricks sessions! There are several more sessions that I need to catch up on, including the “Tableau Tip Battle” with Jade Corley and Jennifer Dawes, “Level Up Your Maps in Tableau” with Dennis Kao, and a “Speedy Data Prep” session with Jared Flores and David Kelley.
So get out there, learn some tricks, and share them on social media (crediting the presenter, of course). I guarantee they’ll be new to many of your #DataFam friends!
