Myrian

Transform Your Data with Tableau’s Formatting Features

This tutorial covers the following:

Optimizing the design of titles, tooltips, colors, and labels in Tableau

Download the sample spreadsheet about public educational organizations in Connecticut and connect it to Tableau Public to follow along with us.
To make changes to the Education_directory.cvs sheet, drag it to the center of the screen:
- Double-click sheet one at the top of the DataViz to open the popup.
- Edit the font, size, alignment, or text’s emphasis using the options provided.
- Click Apply and OK to save the changes.

To modify the visualization of the sheet:
- Open the Marks card.
- Choose a different visualization from the drop-down menu.
- Click on the elements you want to modify, such as color, size, label, or tooltip.

Short Instructional Video

Video 1 “Select visualization using Show Me tool,” Self-hosted video, 00:28 seconds, posted by Myri Ayala.

If you want to focus on a specific subset of your data when creating visualizations, Tableau offers a filtering tool that can help. Let’s use this tool to filter a list of towns and cities in the Hartford region.
First, drag the sheet to the filter shelf, which will give you a window to select the data you want to display. In this case, we’ll choose only the towns and cities in the Hartford region. Once you’ve made your selection, click Apply and then OK. To learn more about filtering categorical data, click here.
Next, drag the filtered file to the center of the worksheet. From the data menu on the left side, locate the column or sheet that contains the data you’re interested in. In this case, we want to see the number of public schools available, so let’s drag the Education_directory column to the center of the worksheet. Tableau will automatically calculate the number of schools per town.
To display your findings, use the Show Me toolbar to select the best visualization for your data.

Short Instructional Video

Video 2 “Filter data using Tableau filter shelf feature,” Self-hosted video, 00:26 seconds, posted by Myri Ayala.

When creating a DataViz in Tableau, you may need to adjust the axis to represent your data better. To make changes to the axis, simply right-click on it [axis] and select “Edit Axis.” From here, you can modify the text, adjust the range, or customize the axis.
If you want to hide the axis text altogether, simply uncheck the “Show Header” option.
In addition to editing the text and visibility of the axis, you can also format it to change the font, shading, and alignment. To do this, right-click on the axis and select “Format.” This will bring up a menu where you can make various visual adjustments to the axis to make it more visually appealing and easier to read.
By taking advantage of these simple editing and formatting options, you can create visualizations that are informative and aesthetically pleasing.

Short Instructional Video

Video 3 “Formatting axis in your visualization” Self-hosted video, 00:28 seconds, posted by Myri Ayala