Clearly and Simply

Tableau Quick Tip #4 – Drop Lines

Call out positions of selected data points in your Tableau view using Drop Lines

I am barely using gridlines on my charts. In fact I didn’t even know that Tableau Software has an option to show and format gridlines. Hence I started the original introduction to this post as follows:

Unlike Microsoft Excel, Tableau Software does not provide an option to display gridlines on charts. Tableau allows you to define so called row and column dividers, but only for categorical data, i.e. dimensions.

This statement is totally wrong: Tableau offers gridlines (Format | Lines | Grid Lines) and Rich was kind enough to correct this in the first comment to this post. Thanks Rich. My fault. I apologize for the confusion.

But still: gridlines are very often nothing else than chart junk as Stephen Few points out in this excellent article: Grid Lines in Graphs are Rarely Useful. Tableau has something way more useful than gridlines: the interactive Drop Line.

Today’s short Tableau Quick Tip #4 introduces this extremely helpful interactive feature of Tableau.

Tableau Quick Tip #3 – Keyboard Shortcuts

Increase your productivity with a comprehensive list of all Tableau keyboard shortcuts

Dragging and dropping fields to the different shelves is the heart of user interaction in Tableau Software. In general, Tableau is predominantly designed for using the mouse.

However, like with any other software application, using keyboard shortcuts can be a big boost for your productivity in Tableau as well. Especially for functions you are using very often, knowing and taking advantage of the keyboard shortcuts can save you a lot of time.

But which keyboard shortcuts are available in Tableau?

Well, the Tableau Manual has 5 pages with the most important shortcuts. Aside from the fact that there are some more, flipping through 5 pages during your work with Tableau is inconvenient. The better option would be a small print-out, only displaying those shortcuts you like most and/or you want to learn by heart.

Today’s short article provides an Excel workbook, including a comprehensive list of all Tableau shortcuts and a feature to design and create such a small display of your favorite shortcuts. You could easily print this and position it somewhere you can have half an eye on while working with Tableau. Of course, today’s quick tip includes the Excel workbook for free download.

Tableau Quick Tip #2 – Custom Number Formats

How to use Tableau Software’s Custom Number Formats

Tableau provides a variety of built-in number and date formats. There are the standard formats “numbers”, “currency”, “scientific” and “percentage”. For scientific and percentage you can only change the decimal places, but for numbers and currencies you can also define the way negative values are displayed, the displayed units, the thousand separator and you can add a prefix and/or suffix to the number. For date fields, Tableau offers 17 different standard formats.

Tableau’s built-in number and date formats will meet most of your requirements. From time to time, however, you need something different. E.g. you want to see “Quarter” instead of “Q” on your date axis, you want to display numbers in hundreds or you need to add some text to the numbers displayed. This is where Tableau’s Custom Number Formats come into play. Today’s post provides some links to learn the principles and the syntax, includes some examples and discusses Tableau’s limitations compared to Microsoft Excel.

Tableau Quick Tip #1 - The Summary Card

Support your ad-hoc analysis and exploration of new data with Tableau's Summary Card

I decided to start a new little category of posts here on Clearly and Simply: Tableau Quick Tips. Today’s post could be the first one in a series of very short articles describing some of the little nuggets in Tableau’s functionality.

Let’s give it a try with a quick hint on Tableau’s Summary Card.