Format Titles, Captions, Tooltips, and Legends

There are several ways text can appear on a sheet. You can show titles and captions on any sheet. Another option is to Add tooltips to marks. A legend card appears in the worksheet when you encode marks by dropping them on the Color or Size cards. It’s also possible to Add Annotations for a mark, point, or area in the view.

These text elements can be customized for text properties like size, color, alignment, and font, as well as element properties like shading and borders.

Note: Some of these formatting options are only available in Tableau Desktop.

Some parts of the view have their own formatting and editing controls, such as an axis(Link opens in a new window), and the text(Link opens in a new window) like labels and headers.

Show titles and other text elements

Titles and captions

If a title or caption isn't showing, open the Worksheet menu and select Show Title or Show Caption.

For dashboards and stories, there are equivalent options in their respective menus (such as Dashboard> Show Title). There is also a check box to toggle the dashboard or story title on or off, available in the left-hand pane.

Legends and other elements

By default, a legend card is created whenever a field is encoded by color, size, or shape. If a legend is removed or hidden, however, it can be brought back.

Open the Analysis menu > Legends and select the desired option. Only legends that are relevant to the view can be selected. That is, if nothing is on the Size shelf, the size legend cannot be turned on.

On Worksheets

These items can also be toggled by right-clicking anywhere in the grey area of the sheet, such as under the Marks card.

For more information about adding elements such as legends, filters, and parameter controls to a worksheet, see Additional Shelves, Legends, Cards, and Controls.

Edit titles and captions

  1. On a worksheet, hover on the title, click the drop-down arrow on the right-hand side and select Edit Title or Edit Caption from the context menu. Alternatively: 
    1. Right-click (control-click on Mac) the item you want to change and select Edit.
    2. In web editing, double click the worksheet title. Note that captions and legend titles cannot be edited in web editing
  2. In the Edit Title dialog box, modify the text and format the font, size, style, color, and alignment. If desired, use the Insert menu to add dynamic text such as sheet properties and field values. To reset a title or caption back to the default, click Reset.

Format titles and captions

For information on showing or hiding a title, see Titles.

  1. On a worksheet, right-click (control-click on Mac) the title, caption, or legend and select Format <item>—for example, Format Title.
  2. In the Format pane, use the drop-down lists to change the default shading or border.

Edit dashboard titles

For information on showing or hiding a title, see Titles.

  1. On a dashboard, double-click the title.
  2. In the Edit Title dialog box that appears, format the title as you like. You can enter a new title for the dashboard or a description, as well as change the font type, size, emphasis, color, and alignment. You can also type in a website URL and Tableau will automatically create a hyperlink.

    Note: If you edit the hyperlink, make sure to delete the entire hyperlink and then reenter the new one. If you do not do this, the text of the hyperlink will update, but the URL path will not.

  3. When finished, click OK. The dashboard title updates with the changes.

Format tooltips

Tooltips are details that appear when you rest the pointer over one or more marks in the view. Tooltips also offer convenient tools to quickly filter or remove a selection, select marks that have the same value or view underlying data.

You can edit the tooltip to include both static and dynamic text. You can also modify which fields are included in the automatic tooltip.

  1. On the Marks card select Tooltip. Tooltips are specified for each sheet and can be formatted using the formatting tools along the top of the Edit Tooltip dialog box.
  2. Use the Insert menu at the top of the dialog box to add dynamic text such as field values, sheet properties, and more.
  3. Use the formatting tools along the top of the Edit Tooltip dialog box.

There are several optional customizations as well.

Dynamic text values

Use the Insert drop-down list at the top of the dialog box to add dynamic text such as field values, sheet properties, and more.

The All Fields option on the Insert menu adds all field names and values that are used in the view. Inserting the All Fields parameter updates the tooltip as you change the view. You can also use the All Fields option to exclude fields.

Command buttons

Select the Include command buttons option to show filtering and view data options in the tooltip.

For example, including command buttons will add Keep Only, Exclude, and View Data buttons to the tooltip. These command buttons are available both in Tableau Desktop and when the view is published to the web or viewed on a mobile device. Unchecking Include command buttons will also hide the aggregation summary if multiple marks are selected.

Selection by category

Select the Allow selection by category check box to select marks in a view that have the same value by clicking on a discrete field in a tooltip. For more information see Tooltips.

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