Innovative Tableau

Chapter 16. 3 Ways to Make Handsome Highlight Tables: Tip 1

To draw a highlight table in Tableau, you need one or more dimensions and exactly one measure. This is the same criteria to draw a raw text table in Tableau, except with highlight tables, you’re limited to one measure instead of one or more measures. This one measure is what encodes the cells in the table by the preattentive attribute of color. It’s essentially a spreadsheet with colored cells.

The highlight table is my favorite chart type for introducing the value of data visualization. I think it works well because most companies are still using spreadsheets for most of their reporting, and by converting a text table to a highlight table, the audience is forced to take advantage of at least one preattentive attribute. This kind of becomes a gateway to more complex visualizations.

Highlight tables are already more engaging and effective than a text table/crosstab view, but the next three chapters aim to provide more ways to make your highlight tables even better in Tableau.

How to Make a Highlight Table in Tableau

To lay the foundation for the next couple of tips, I’m going to make a quick highlight table in Tableau using the Sample – Superstore dataset.

There are several ways to make this, but for this example, let’s preselect the fields Order Date, Sub-Category, and Profit; then, in the upper-right corner of the authoring window, in the Show Me pane, select the third option on the top row, highlight tables ...