Introduction to Tableau

The Tableau workspace consists of menus, a toolbar, the Data pane, cards and shelves, and one or more sheets. Sheets can be worksheets, dashboards, or stories. For details on dashboard or story workspaces, see Create a Dashboard or The Story Workspace. 

Workspace area

A. Workbook name. A workbook contains sheets. A sheet can be a worksheet, a dashboard, or a story. For more information, see Workbooks and Sheets.

B. Cards and shelves - Drag fields to the cards and shelves in the workspace to add data to your view.

C. Toolbar - Use the toolbar to access commands and analysis and navigation tools.

D. View - This is the canvas in the workspace where you create a visualization (also referred to as a "viz").

E. Click this icon to go to the Start page, where you can connect to data. For more information, see Start Page.

F. Side Bar - In a worksheet, the side bar area contains the Data pane and the Analytics pane.

G. Click this tab to go to the Data Source page and view your data. For more information, see Data Source Page.

H. Status bar - Displays information about the current view.

I. Sheet tabs - Tabs represent each sheet in your workbook. This can include worksheets, dashboards, and stories. For more information, see Workbooks and Sheets.

When you are creating or editing a view, you can use the toolbar at the top of the view to perform common actions.

In Tableau Desktop, you can hide or display the Tableau toolbar by selecting Window > Show Toolbar.

Show and Hide the Side Bar (Data pane)

The Side Bar contains the Data pane and the Analytics pane when you are editing a worksheet. Different panes are visible depending on what you are doing in the view (Data, Analytics, Story, Dashboard, Layout, Format). The most important thing to know about the Side Bar is that you can expand and collapse this area in the workspace.

To hide the side bar in Tableau Desktop, click the collapse arrow in the side bar.

Status Bar Information

The status bar is located at the bottom of the Tableau workspace. It displays descriptions of menu items as well as information about the current view. For example, the status bar below shows that the view has 143 marks shown in 3 rows and 12 columns. It also shows that the SUM(Sales) for all the marks in the view is $2,297,201.

You can hide the status bar by selecting Window > Show Status Bar.

Occasionally, Tableau will display warning icons in the bottom right corner of the status bar to indicate errors or warnings.