How to Combine Filters in Tableau Dashboard

When you place multiple filters on a Tableau dashboard, you expect them to work together to tell a clear story. But if they operate independently, you can leave your audience with confusing, empty charts and a frustrating user experience. Properly combining your filters is what transforms a static report into an intuitive, interactive analysis tool.

This tutorial will show you how to make your Tableau filters work in concert. We'll cover fundamental techniques for applying filters across multiple charts, creating user-friendly cascading filters, and using context filters to improve performance and control your calculations.

What Do We Mean by "Combining Filters?"

Combining filters isn't about having a lot of them on one dashboard. It's about making them interact intelligently. The goal is to create a guided analytical experience where each selection a user makes gracefully updates the rest of the dashboard.

Imagine a sales dashboard with three separate dropdown filters: Region, Country, and City. An effective combination means that when a user selects "Europe" from the Region filter:

The Country filter automatically updates to show only European countries (Germany, France, UK, etc.).
The City filter then updates to show only the cities within the selected country.
All charts on the dashboard - sales trends, product performance, etc. - instantly refresh to show data for the selected location.

Without this connection, the user could select "Europe," then "United States," then "Tokyo," resulting in a blank dashboard and a lot of confusion. Smart filter combinations prevent this, making your analysis both powerful and foolproof.

Method 1: Applying a Single Filter to Multiple Worksheets

The most basic form of combining filters is making sure one filter controls several different charts on your dashboard. This is essential for creating a unified view. If you have a bar chart of sales by product and a map of sales by state, a "Year" filter should almost certainly apply to both.

Here’s how to set it up:

Build your worksheets: Start by creating the individual charts you want to include on your dashboard. Ensure they use the same data source, or related data sources. For this example, let's say we have one worksheet showing Sales over Time and another showing Sales by Category.
Create your dashboard: Drag both worksheets onto your new dashboard canvas.
Show the filter: Select one of the worksheets on the dashboard. Click the small dropdown arrow on its top border and navigate to Filters > [Your Desired Filter]. Let's use Order Date. This will add the filter card to your dashboard view.
Tell the filter what to control: By default, this filter only affects its original worksheet. To change this, click the dropdown arrow on the filter card itself and go to Apply to Worksheets. You will see several options:
- All Using This Data Source: This is a powerful, straightforward option. The filter will automatically control every worksheet in your workbook that is built from this specific data source.
- All Using Related Data Sources: If you've set up relationships between different data sources, this option will apply the filter across them.
- Selected Worksheets...: This gives you precise control. A dialog box will appear, listing all the worksheets on your dashboard. You can manually check which sheets you want this single filter to control. This is perfect for when you want a filter to affect some charts but not others.
Test it out: Once you've made your selection (e.g., Selected Worksheets... and chose both Sales over Time and Sales by Category), try using the filter. Changing the date range should now update both charts simultaneously.

Method 2: Creating Cascading Filters with "Only Relevant Values"

Cascading filters - also known as dependent or hierarchical filters - are a hallmark of a professional dashboard. They create a logical flow for the user, where one choice narrows down the options for the next. This prevents users from making impossible combinations and getting no results.

Let's go back to our Category and Sub-Category example. We want the Sub-Category filter to only show items that belong to the Category selected in the first filter.

The magic for this lies in a simple setting: Only Relevant Values.

Step-by-Step Guide to Cascading Filters

Add both filters to a worksheet: Start in a single worksheet view. Drag Category to the Filters shelf. Then, drag Sub-Category to the Filters shelf. Apply any necessary initial filtering (like selecting "All") and click OK on the dialog boxes.
Display the filters: In the Filters shelf, right-click on the Category pill and select Show Filter. Do the same for the Sub-Category pill. You should now see both filter cards in your view. Initially, the Sub-Category list shows all sub-categories regardless of the Category selection.
Set the dependency: This is the key step. On the Sub-Category filter card, click its dropdown menu and select Only Relevant Values. You won't see any immediate change on this filter card just showing the check mark, but the logic is now in place. Notice how the primary Category filter has the option All Values in Database. Don't change that setting.
Test the cascade: Now try it out. If you uncheck everything in the Category filter except for "Furniture," the Sub-Category list instantly truncates to show only "Bookcases," "Chairs," "Furnishings," and "Tables."
Use it on your dashboard: When you add this worksheet to your dashboard and show the filters, this cascading behavior will carry over, providing a much smoother user experience. Remember to use the "Apply to Worksheets" setting from Method 1 to make these cascading filters control all the relevant charts.

Method 3: Using Context Filters for Performance and Logic

Context filters operate at a higher level than standard dimension filters. Think of them as creating a temporary, smaller dataset before your regular filters do their work. This has two major benefits: drastically improving dashboard performance and changing the order of operations for more advanced calculations like FIXED Level of Detail (LOD) expressions.

When should you use a Context Filter?

There are two primary scenarios where a context filter is the right tool for the job:

Improving Performance: If you have a filter that dramatically shrinks your dataset (e.g., selecting one year out of ten, or one country out of 100), make it a context filter. This forces Tableau to process that filter first, so all subsequent filters and calculations have a much smaller set of data to analyze, making your dashboard much faster and more responsive.
Controlling FIXED LODs or Top N Filters: By default, FIXED LOD expressions ignore standard dimension filters. This can lead to unexpected results. For example, if you calculate { FIXED [Region] : SUM([Sales]) }, it calculates total sales for each region in the entire dataset. If a user then filters by Product Category, the FIXED calculation doesn't change. If you want the category filter to apply before the FIXED calculation runs, you must add the Product Category filter to the context. The same logic applies to Top N filters (e.g., Top 10 Products).

Creating a Context Filter is Easy

Create a standard filter: Drag a dimension, like Region, to the Filters shelf as you normally would.
Add to Context: Right-click on the Region pill within the Filters shelf. In the menu that appears, simply select Add to Context.
Note the visual change: The pill in the Filters shelf will turn from blue or green to a grey color. This is your visual cue that it is now a context filter and will be processed before any other filters on the shelf (other than other context filters).

Example: Top 10 Products within a Specific Region

Imagine you want to create a filter that shows the top 10 best-selling products. You also have a Region filter for your users.

Without a context filter: Tableau first identifies the Top 10 products across the entire company. When a user selects "West" in the Region filter, the dashboard will only show which of those global Top 10 products were sold in the West region. You might see only three or four products.
With a context filter: By adding the Region filter to the context, you change the order. Now, when a user selects "West," Tableau first filters the entire dataset down to just sales from the West region. Then, it calculates the Top 10 products from within that smaller, pre-filtered dataset. This shows the user the actual Top 10 products for their selected region, which is usually the intended result.

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to combine filters in Tableau elevates your dashboards from simple data displays to powerful analytical tools. By applying filters across worksheets for a unified feel, creating cascading filters for a guided user journey, and using context filters to boost performance and control calculations, you can build reports that are both insightful and effortless to use.

If you're looking for a faster way to create interactive reports like these, we designed Graphed to remove these manual steps. Instead of needing to remember settings like "Only Relevant Values" or "Add to Context," you can just ask for what you want in plain English. Describing a request like, "Build me a dashboard of US sales, and let me filter by state, then see the top products for that state" will automatically generate a dashboard with the filters already connected and configured for you, turning hours of configuration into a 30-second task.