How to Create Multiple Marks Cards in Tableau

Building a basic chart in Tableau is straightforward, but taking your visualizations to the next level means layering different types of information in a single view. That's exactly where multiple Marks Cards come in, allowing you to create powerful combination charts like bar graphs overlaid with trend lines. This guide will walk you through what multiple Marks Cards are and how to use them with step-by-step instructions.

What Exactly Is a Marks Card in Tableau?

Think of the Marks Card as your control panel for customizing how your data looks. It's the box to the left of your worksheet view where you drag and drop fields to adjust the visual properties of the data points, or "marks," in your chart. Every worksheet in Tableau has at least one Marks Card by default.

The standard properties on the Marks Card include:

• Color: Assign colors to your marks based on a dimension (e.g., blue for the "West" region, red for "East") or a measure (e.g., shades of green for profit, where darker means higher).
• Size: Change the size of your marks based on a measure. For example, in a scatter plot of products, larger circles could represent higher sales volumes.
• Label: Display text labels directly on your marks. You could label each bar in a chart with its corresponding value.
• Detail: Add a dimension to this property to show more marks without separating them into different panes or colors. For example, if you have a bar chart of sales by a sales-rep, you could drag the customer-name onto detail to include all their customers without coloring by customer.
• Tooltip: Customize the pop-up box that appears when you hover over a mark with your mouse. You can add extra context or data points here that don't need to be visible on the main chart.

On top of these, you'll see a dropdown menu that lets you change the "mark type," choosing between bars, lines, circles, squares, shapes, maps (polygons), and more. Mastering this area is fundamental to building virtually any visualization in Tableau.

Why Would You Need Multiple Marks Cards?

If every sheet has a Marks Card, why would you need more than one? The answer is simple: to control different data series independently within the same chart. When you introduce a second measure onto your Rows or Columns shelf and create a dual-axis chart, Tableau generates a separate Marks Card for each measure.

This lets you create powerful layered visualizations, including:

• Combination Charts: The most common use case. For example, you can show company revenue as a bar chart and the profit margin as a line chart within the same view for the same time period.
• Bar-in-Bar Charts: A great way to compare two measures directly, like showing current year sales versus target sales in a single unified bar.
• Lollipop Charts: A visually appealing alternative to bar charts that combines thin lines with circles at the end.
• Scatterplots with Reference Lines: You can plot your individual data points on one Marks Card and create an average reference line or band on a separate one.

Essentially, any time you want one set of data points to look and function differently than another set in the same visual space, you'll need multiple Marks Cards. Each card gives you independent control over the color, size, shape, and labels for its specific data series.

How To Create a Basic Bar-and-Line Combination Chart

Let's walk through the most common reason you’d use multiple Marks Cards: creating a combination chart that shows sales Volume as a bar chart and Profit Ratio as a line chart. We'll use the 'Sample - Superstore' dataset that comes with Tableau.

Step 1: Build Your Initial View

First, create the foundation for your chart. You need a dimension for your x-axis (usually a date) and a starting measure for your y-axis.

1. Connect to the Sample - Superstore data source.
2. Drag the Order Date dimension to the Columns shelf. Right-click the pill and choose Month (May 2015) to see a continuous monthly timeline.
3. Drag the Sales measure to the Rows shelf.

You should now have a simple line chart showing sales over time.

Step 2: Add the Second Measure and Create a Dual Axis

Now, let’s add our second measure. This is the crucial step that generates the additional Marks Cards.

1. Drag the Profit measure from the Data pane and drop it onto the Rows shelf, to the right of the SUM(Sales) pill. This will create a second line chart directly below the first one.
2. Now we need to combine them. Right-click the new SUM(Profit) pill in the Rows shelf and select Dual Axis from the dropdown menu.

Tableau will overlay the two charts. You’ll notice the axes don't line up properly, but don't worry - we'll fix that. Most importantly, look to your left. Your Marks Shelf should now have three tabs: All, SUM(Sales), and SUM(Profit). Success!

Step 3: Customize Each Marks Card

With separate Marks Cards, you now have granular control over each measure in the view. We want Sales to be a bar chart and Profit to be a line chart.

1. Click on the SUM(Sales) Marks Card to select it.
2. In the dropdown menu that currently says Automatic, choose Bar. Your Sales data now appears as a series of bars.
3. Now, click on the SUM(Profit) Marks Card.
4. Ensure its mark type dropdown is set to Line (it probably is by default).

Step 4: Synchronize the Axes and Clean Up

Right now, the chart is misleading because the two y-axes have different scales. A big dip in Profit might look much smaller than a slight dip in Sales.

1. Right-click on the right-hand axis (the one for Profit) and select Synchronize Axis. Now both axes reflect the same scale, providing an accurate visual comparison.
2. As a final touch, you can right-click one of the axes and de-select "Show Header" to remove the redundant axis, making the final view a little bit cleaner.

You now have a clean, insightful combination chart! From here, you can use the individual Marks Cards to further differentiate the visuals. On the SUM(Profit) Marks Card, you could change the line color to orange. On the SUM(Sales) Marks Card, you could reduce the color opacity to 60% to make the line in front stand out more.

Advanced Tips for Using Multiple Marks Cards

Once you've mastered the basics of creating a two-series combination chart, you can use multiple Marks Cards for even more sophisticated visualizations.

Customizing Tooltips For Each Mark

One of the most useful features of multiple Marks Cards is the ability to create unique tooltips. On our bar-and-line chart, you can tell completely different stories when a user hovers over a bar versus when they hover over a line.

• On the SUM(Sales) Marks Card, click on Tooltip. A box will pop up where you can format the text. You could set it up to clearly state "Total Sales: &lt,SUM(Sales)&gt,".
• On the SUM(Profit) Marks Card, you could do the same, but show "Total Profit: &lt,SUM(Profit)&gt,". Add more context here, like dragging Profit Ratio into Tooltip, and show all three measures at the same time to have even more context about each mark on the chart.

This allows your end-user to get specific, relevant information about the data point they're interacting with, rather than showing a generic tooltip with all data points bunched together.

Building Bar-in-Bar Charts

A bar-in-bar chart is a fantastic way to compare two measures, like current year sales vs. previous year sales, without using two separate colors. The trick is to manipulate the Size property.

1. Create a basic bar chart (e.g., Category in Columns, Sales in Rows).
2. Drag your second measure (e.g., Profit) directly onto the vertical Sales axis in the main view. This will put Measure Names on the Columns shelf and Measure Values in Rows.
3. Now, drag the Measure Names pill from the Columns shelf onto the Size property in the All Marks Card.
4. Finally, click the down arrow on the Measure Names pill you dropped into "Size" and edit the sizings. Voila! You'll have one thick bar and one skinny bar inside of that bar!
5. Feel free to add filters on Year(Order Date) or use Level of Detail expressions to create more advanced measures for the same goal.

Controlling Overlapping Marks with Color and Opacity

When you layer marks, one can easily hide another. On the Color property of any Marks Card, you can adjust the opacity. If you have a bar chart for sales and a circle for profit ratio on top of it, lowering the opacity of the circles is a good visualization practice. For maps, you might use a filled map layer to show the state-level profit (coloring by profit) and layer a circle right over it to represent the number of customers (sizing by customer count). Adjusting opacity ensures both layers are visible.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the use of multiple Marks Cards unlocks a new level of customization and storytelling in Tableau. By creating an additional measure axis in your view, you gain independent control over each data series, allowing you to build richer, layered, and more insightful combination charts.

Whether you're building a dashboard in Tableau or another business intelligence tool, the goal is always to get clear answers from your data quickly. We know that building these views, while powerful, often requires a great deal of manual setup. To help streamline that process, we created Graphed , where you can build real-time, interactive dashboards just by describing what you need in plain English. Instead of configuring dual axes and synchronizing them, you can just ask, "Show me sales as a bar chart and profit as a line chart by month," and watch it appear in seconds.