Use Tableau Comments to Provide Context to Data Fields and Calculations

Contributed by: Christopher Gardner

Difficulty level: Beginner

You’ve built a fantastic workbook in Tableau, but would you be able to make an update or a change several months from now? Would you remember what each of the fields in the data represented? Would you recall why you made calculations and what each did? Tableau desktop provides a little-known feature that provides context to you or anyone else who may need to update your Tableau workbook—field tooltips.

The main purpose of field tooltips is to provide context when you or someone else has to open and/or modify a workbook utilizing data fields with unintuitive names. Many times, fields come in raw from the data source with labels that only make sense to those familiar with the data. A tooltip comment can provide clarification on what the field actually is and what it is used for within the workbook.

Adding a comment to a data field is a simple process:

1. Right click on any field in the Data pane to pull up the context menu. Select Comment.

   

   Figure 0.

   Find the Comment option in the context menu. In some cases, the comments will be available under Default Properties, and in others it will be directly within the context menu.

2. In the comment, type any information about the field that can provide context to you or anyone else who may need to work ...