Tableau Basics: Use Shift Key to Select Multiple List Items

Contributed by: Christopher Gardner

Difficulty level: Easy

When you work in Tableau, you occasionally have the need to select multiple items to create a group, filter a view, or for various other reasons. It is extremely tedious to select each box individually to get the list of values you desire. Tableau offers options to select all or none, but even that only helps a little. What you may not know is that you can use the shift key to make your life easier.

Let’s look at a filter for example. Here is the “Select from list” window.

Figure 0.

Imagine you need to select large groups of states. How could you get multiple states selected without having to click one at a time? Just follow these steps:

1. Click on the first state itself (not the box), and it will be highlighted.

   

   Figure 0.

2. Hold down the Shift key and select a state lower in the list.

   

   Figure 0.

   

   Figure 0.

While this is an extremely simple tip, it is still extremely useful. Little things like this save you a ton of time when building and designing visualizations ...