How to Create a Highlight Table in Tableau

A wall of numbers in a spreadsheet can be effective for precision, but it often fails to tell a story or point you to insights quickly. You can easily build this kind of text-heavy table in Tableau, but to make it truly useful, you need to add a visual layer that guides the eye. This is where a highlight table shines. This article will walk you through exactly how to create, customize, and get the most out of highlight tables in Tableau.

What is a Highlight Table?

A highlight table is a type of data visualization that enhances a standard text table (also known as a crosstab) with color. The numbers remain visible in each cell, but the background of the cells is colored based on a measure's value. Think of it as a hybrid between a text table and a heatmap. It gives you the raw detail of a traditional table and the immediate visual cues of a color-coded chart.

Highlight tables are exceptionally useful for:

Quickly spotting patterns: You can see clusters of high or low values at a glance.
Identifying extremes and outliers: The darkest and lightest colored cells will immediately draw your attention to the highest and lowest numbers in your dataset.
Comparing values across categories: It's much easier to compare sales across different regions when you can associate a color with performance instead of manually scanning each number.

While a heatmap only uses color and shape to represent data, a highlight table keeps the numbers in view, making it a great choice when stakeholders need to see both the general pattern and the precise underlying figures.

Step-by-Step: How to Create a Highlight Table in Tableau

Creating a highlight table is one of the most straightforward yet valuable things you can do in Tableau. We'll use the classic Sample - Superstore dataset that comes with Tableau Desktop to build one showing Sales by Product Sub-Category and Region.

Step 1: Build the Basic Table Structure

First, we need to create a simple text table. This involves placing your dimensions - the categorical data you want to analyze - onto the Columns and Rows shelves.

Drag the "Sub-Category" dimension from the Data pane and drop it onto the Rows Shelf.
Drag the "Region" dimension from the Data pane and drop it onto the Columns Shelf.

At this point, you will have a framework of a table with your product sub-categories listed as rows and the regions as columns. The cells will be empty because you haven’t told Tableau which numbers to put in them yet.

Step 2: Add Your Measure to the Table

Next, we'll add the quantitative data, or measure, that you want to display. In this case, we’ll use Sales.

Find the "Sales" measure in the Data pane.
Drag "Sales" and drop it onto the Text mark in the Marks card.

Your table will now be populated with the sum of sales for each combination of sub-category and region. You've now got a standard text table.

Step 3: Add Color to Create the Highlight Effect

This is the key step that transforms your text table into a highlight table. To color the cells based on the sales figures, you need to add the same measure to the Color mark.

Drag the "Sales" measure again from the Data pane.
This time, drop it onto the Color mark in the Marks card.

You’ll notice that the numbers are now colored based on their value. However, only the text is colored, not the entire cell background. To fix this, we need to make one final change.

Step 4: Change the Mark Type to Square

The secret to coloring the entire cell instead of just the text is to change the Mark Type. Tableau's "Automatic" setting for this type of chart defaults to text.

In the Marks card, find the dropdown menu that likely says "Automatic."
Click on it and select "Square" from the list.

Instantly, the view changes. Each cell in your table is now a colored square, with the sales number prominently displayed in the middle. Congratulations, you've created a highlight table! You can now easily see that Phones and Chairs are top performers in every region, while categories like Fasteners and Labels have consistently low sales.

Customizing Your Highlight Table

The default highlight table is great, but Tableau gives you a ton of control to make it even more effective and visually appealing. Here’s how to tailor it to your needs.

Editing Colors and Palettes

The default color palette might not be the best fit for your data or your company's branding. To change it, click on the Color mark in the Marks card, and select "Edit Colors..."

Sequential Palettes: Use these for measures that go from low to high, like Sales, Quantity, or Site Traffic. A single color that fades from light to dark is perfect for showing this progression. Example: Blue Light-to-Dark Sequential Palette.
Diverging Palettes: These are ideal for measures that have a meaningful midpoint, like Profit (which can be positive or negative) or variance from a target. A two-color scheme with a neutral center makes it easy to see values on either side of the center point. Example: Red-Green Diverging Palette, where red is negative profit and green is positive profit.
Stepped Color: Instead of a smooth gradient, you can use "Stepped Color" to group values into distinct color bins. Setting it to 5 steps, for instance, will create five color groups, which can make differentiation even easier.

Formatting Numbers and Labels

Raw numbers can sometimes look messy. Cleaning them up makes your table more professional and easier to read.

To format currency or decimals: Right-click on the SUM(Sales) pill that's on the Text mark, select Format.... In the pane that appears on the left, navigate to a Numbers dropdown and choose Currency (Custom) to set format like $0K for a cleaner look.
To format font and alignment: Click on the Label mark. From here, you can change the font, size, style, and alignment of the text inside the cells to ensure readability, especially against darker background colors.

Adding Totals and Subtotals

What were the total sales for the West region? And which Sub-Category sold the most overall? A highlight table is more powerful with totals.

To add them, go to the top menu bar and select Analysis > Totals. From there, you can choose to:

Show Row Grand Totals
Show Column Grand Totals
Add All Subtotals

Advanced Tips for Highlight Tables

Once you've mastered the basics, you can apply these advanced techniques to tell more complex stories with your data.

Using a Different Measure for Color

This is an incredibly powerful technique. You don't have to color the cells using the same measure that you're displaying as text. For example, you can display Sales numbers in the cells but use Profit to determine the background color.

This allows you to answer deeper business questions like, "Which product categories have high sales but are actually unprofitable?"

To do this:

Drag "Sales" to the Text mark.
Drag "Profit" to the Color mark.
Set the Mark Type to Square.
Choose a diverging color palette (like Red-Black-Green) to clearly distinguish between negative and positive profit.

Now, you might spot a cell like "Tables" that shows high sales but is colored deep red, indicating it loses money - a critical insight hidden in plain sight.

Highlighting with a Calculated Field

Sometimes you don't need a subtle gradient, you just need a clear binary signal. For example, you might only want to highlight cells that meet a certain threshold, like sales above a specific target.

You can achieve this with a calculated field. Create a Calculated Field and use a simple formula:

Drag this new calculated field to the Color mark instead of the Sales measure. Now, you can assign just two colors - one for "Above Target" and one for "Below Target." This is an extremely effective way to draw focus to exactly what matters.

Final Thoughts

Highlight tables are a fundamental building block in Tableau for a reason. They masterfully blend the need for precise data with the power of visual analysis, making your tables more intuitive and impactful for any audience. By following these steps and customizations, you can quickly turn static, uninspiring crosstabs into compelling visual stories.

Building dashboards in tools like Tableau is powerful, but it often involves a lot of manual clicks, dragging, and dropping to get to your final insight. We designed Graphed because we believe getting answers from your data should be as easy as asking a question. By connecting your sources - from Google Analytics to Salesforce - you can use natural language to instantly build the same visualizations that take hours to configure manually, letting you move straight from question to a real-time, shareable dashboard in seconds.