Innovative Tableau

Chapter 49. 3 Innovative Ways to Use Text: Tip 3

Format Text Tables Like Finance Reports

I am often asked to format text tables in Tableau with different levels of indentation for certain rows, like you might see in an accounting report. It’s important to remember that Tableau does not make spreadsheets; even its crosstabs are visual representations of the underlying table of data. This is why you can’t simply click into a cell and modify the value or the formatting for that cell.

If you need to have multiple alignments for your table headers, I have two simple tricks for you. For demonstration purposes, suppose that we want to indent the sub-categories in the Sample – Superstore dataset alphabetically: A sub-categories won’t have any indentation; B sub-categories should be indented one tab (about five spaces); and C sub-categories should be indented two tabs (about 10 spaces).

I also filter out the other sub-categories to simplify my table. Imagine that the sub-categories are different subtotals or callouts within your finance table. Here’s what the table looks like by default:

The trick to changing the alignment is to simply right-click each dimension member, and then, on the menu that opens, choose Edit Alias and add your leading spaces:

Note that this changes the sort ...