Tableau Desktop Cookbook

Chapter 5. Lines

In this chapter, we will focus on using the Line mark type within the Marks card. Line charts are very useful for looking at trends over time. A line chart is mainly used when you are comparing data over time.

Dates can be split into Discrete and Continuous. As mentioned in the introduction, a discrete field will create headers, whereas a continuous field will create an axis. When using Dates, a discrete date will be using an individual date part, which is a standalone element like Months or Weeks. When using continuous dates, it will return the date value. When looking at Months, Tableau will return the month and the year instead of just the month.

5.1 Line Charts

Problem

You want to see the sales trend over time, split by year and quarter.

Understanding Dates

When you right-click and drag a date field to any shelf, you will get this pop-up box, which has five sections:

The top section gives you the exact date as either a continuous or discrete field:

The second section gives you the individual date parts, irrespective of the hierarchy. For example, when using MONTH(Order Date), it will return the individual months without the years:

The third section ...