3 Formatting Tips For Tableau

Proper formatting is one of the things that can take a good dashboard and make it great. Functionally, it does not change the dashboard but you would be surprised how much better received a good looking dashboard is compared to a functional but ugly dashboard. Here are three general Tableau formatting tips to take your dashboard from meh to wow!

1. Use White Space – White space is the most important and overlooked piece of a good looking dashboard. This can be incorporated in two ways. The first is to not over clutter a dashboard. Too much input on the page is overwhelming and confuses the user. A general rule of thumb is to limit your dashboard to 2-3 horizontal sections.
   
   The second incorporation of white space is to use padding. This padding spaces out your visualizations and can give your sections a clean appearance. The default padding on a sheet is 4 all around, but I like to separate my sections by 10 pixels and my visualizations by 5 pixels.
   
   
2. Put Your Barcharts On A Diet – The bar chart is one of the most used and effective visualizations. One of the quickest way to make a bar look better is to use the size button to shrink the bars down slightly. This uses whitespace to make the bars look better on the page.
   
   
3. Containers – Containers are the building blocks for a well formatted dashboard in Tableau. One of the differences in good vs great dashboards is the proper use of containers. Containers are the most powerful tool in laying out a dashboard, moving pieces cohesively around the page, and creating a custom look. If you want to take your dashboards to the next level dive deep in containers and incorporate them into your work.