5 (more) Tiny Tableau Tips
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Tiny Tips” are my favorite sort of learning for any tool. I love tricks that seem small but end up saving hours over time. These are a few that have made my life a little easier:
1. Data Source Filters
Whenever I need to debug something, my first stop is filters. But if you’ve taken off all your filters and something still doesn’t look right — check to see if there is a filter on the data source. This filter won’t show up in your typical filters shelf. You can read more about data source filters here. They’re pretty nifty.
2. Trim those pesky white spaces
Ideally, every data source would be perfect and we could SELECT * FROM Super_Cool_Pristine_Table, and nothing bad would ever happen. Until then, handy functions like TRIM in Tableau let you do some last-mile data cleanup.
3. Dude, where’s my axis?
This tip brought to you by me googling this every single time I can’t figure out how to get my axis back. One day I’ll remember it.
4. Digging through the database
If you’re working with a database with a lot of tables or views, this may help speed up your search to connect to the right one. You can click and set your search to Exact, Contains, or Starts with.
5. Automate your labels
Can you manually exclude labels when you don’t want them to show? Yes. Should you? I don’t think so. I hate maintaining manual work — I’d much rather set it and forget it. The below example is basic, but you can (and others have) built out more powerful calculations to display some pretty cool custom formatting.
That’s it for this batch! If you like these, check out my first five tips here:
And don’t forget to check out the #TinyTableauTip hashtag on twitter, where many others share their tips as well. Thanks for reading!
