Some pretty common questions heard in my Tableau training courses surround worksheets. Here’s a frequent two-parter:
“How do I clear a worksheet? How do I make a copy?”
Two Essential Tableau Worksheet Shortcuts
Students in training are always curious about the power of Tableau to make their lives easier. One of the ways Tableau can improve chart making capabilities is by providing numerous shortcuts to make visualization creation simpler. Today, let’s take a look at two worksheet tricks that will make you a more efficient chart builder.
Clearing Tableau Worksheets
When first building in Tableau, it is easy to rely on the Show Me menu to create fancy looking visualizations quickly. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced that every now and then our nice looking visualization may not look so nice.
Let’s say that we want to build a visualization that uses Order Date, Ship Mode and State from our Dimensions and Profit from our Measures:
One of the many Show Me options is Lines(Discrete). When I click this type of visualization, my worksheet renders a very confusing and difficult to read graph. This graph has a great deal of noise and is not telling a clear story. A rule of thumb I follow is if the visualization is not clear to me, it definitely will not be clear to my report viewers.
Let’s try going with another Show Me option, the Filled Map since we are using State information:
The Filled Map options shows the State information a bit better, but the information may be too detailed and small to quickly make informed decisions. After playing with a few more Show Me options, I might want to head back to the drawing board and start over. However, I have quite a few fields on Rows and Columns as well as my Marks card that I would need to remove first:
Normally, I would have to remove each field individually, but using one of the Toolbar Icon Menu options I can remove all fields at once. The Clear Sheet button, located below the Story menu option, would be most efficient in this situation. The shortcut for this button is Alt + Shift + Backspace.
Clicking the drop-down arrow to the left of the Clear Sheet button reveals a list of more independent options that can be chosen depending on what you have applied within your worksheet:
Duplicating Tableau Worksheets
Now that my worksheet is blank, I want to consider a different visualization to display the information I need. Using the same Dimensions and Measures as before, I created a simple text table with a State filter to provide the option of rotating through the different state selections:
A text table is great for showing the numbers, but not the best way to graphically display the information. Let’s try making a Stacked Bar Chart to organize our output visually. Rather than messing with the text table worksheet or starting over from scratch, I want to utilize Tableau’s Duplicate Sheet button located in the Toolbar Icon Menu, right next to the Clear Sheet button:
The Duplicate Sheet button will make a copy of whatever is on the current worksheet and place that copy on a new worksheet. This is extremely useful for times when you want to preserve a worksheet and experiment with changes. I often use Duplicate Sheet as a quick start for enhancing an older visualization.
There are many useful buttons on the Toolbar Icon Menu that can drastically speed up your chart building skills, and understanding the Clear Sheet and Duplicate Sheet buttons is a great first step.