How to Create Multiple Tabs in Tableau Dashboard

A crowded dashboard can overwhelm your audience, burying valuable insights under a mountain of charts. Adding tabs is one of the most effective ways to organize your content, guide users through a narrative, and make your Tableau dashboards much cleaner and easier to navigate. This article will walk you through, step-by-step, how to create a tabbed interface and share some best practices for doing it effectively.

Why Use Tabs in Your Tableau Dashboard?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." While a single-page dashboard can be great for a high-level overview, tabs become essential when you need to present more detailed or segmented information. Here are the main benefits:

• Better User Experience (UX): Instead of scrolling endlessly or trying to decipher a dozen charts at once, users can click through logical sections at their own pace. This prevents information overload and makes your data more approachable.
• Logical Organization: Tabs allow you to group related visualizations together. You could have one tab for an "Executive Summary," another for a "Regional Sales Breakdown," and a third for "Marketing Campaign Performance." This structure helps tell a clearer story with your data.
• Improved Performance: Speaking practically, dashboards with dozens of complex worksheets can be slow to load. By using a tabbed structure, you're essentially telling Tableau to only render the worksheets for the active tab, which can lead to faster load times and a smoother experience.

The Core Concept: It's All About Sheet Swapping

Here's a small secret: Tableau doesn't have a default, built-in "Tabs" feature like a web browser or Microsoft Excel. Instead, we create the illusion of tabs by using a clever technique called sheet swapping.

The trick involves placing multiple worksheets in the same layout container on a dashboard. Then, we use a controller — in this case, a Parameter — to tell Tableau which single worksheet to display inside that container at any given time. By linking this parameter to clickable "button" sheets, we create what looks and feels exactly like a tabbed navigation menu.

Let's build one from scratch.

How to Create Tabs Using a Parameter

We'll walk through this powerful and flexible method step-by-step. For this example, let's imagine we want to create two tabs: one for "Sales Overview" and one for "Product Performance."

Step 1: Create Your Individual Worksheets

First, you need the content for each tab. Go ahead and build the worksheets you want to display as if they were separate reports. Don't worry about the tabs yet, just focus on creating the charts.

• Worksheet 1: "Sales Overview" - A simple bar chart showing Sales by Region.
• Worksheet 2: "Product Performance" - A line chart showing Profit over time by Product Category.

Once you have an individual worksheet for each "page" of your future tabbed dashboard, you're ready for the next step.

Step 2: Create a String Parameter

The parameter is the engine that will drive our tab-switching functionality. It acts as a variable that the user can change.

1. In the Data pane, click the small dropdown arrow to the right of the search bar and select Create Parameter.
2. Give it a descriptive name, like "Select a Tab".
3. Set the Data type to String.
4. For Allowable values, choose List.
5. In the list of values, add the names for your tabs. It’s best to use simple, clear names that we'll match later. Let's add:
6. Click OK.

You will now see "Select a Tab" appear in the Parameters section at the bottom of your Data pane. Right-click on it and select Show Parameter so you can see it and test it out later.

Step 3: Create a "View Filter" Calculated Field

Now, we need to create a calculated field that links our parameter choice to our worksheets. This calculation is surprisingly simple — it just needs to contain the parameter itself.

1. Click the Data pane dropdown again and select Create Calculated Field.
2. Name this field "Tab Filter".
3. In the formula box, simply enter the name of your parameter: [Select a Tab].
4. Click OK.

This calculated field will now always reflect the current value of our "Select a Tab" parameter. Next, we apply this as a filter to our worksheets.

Apply The Filter to Your Sheets

This is the most crucial step where the magic happens.

1. Navigate to your "Sales Overview" worksheet.
2. Drag your new "Tab Filter" calculated field onto the Filters card.
3. A filter dialog box will pop up. Go to the Custom value list tab, click the plus icon, and type in "Sales Overview". The name must be an exact match to the value you put in the parameter list.

What does this do? It tells Tableau: "Only show this worksheet when the 'Select a Tab' parameter is set to 'Sales Overview'". Now, repeat the process for your other sheet:

1. Go to your "Product Performance" worksheet.
2. Drag the "Tab Filter" field onto the Filters card.
3. Go to the Custom value list tab, click the plus icon, and this time type in "Product Performance".

At this point, you can test it. Go to one of your worksheets. On the right, you should see the parameter control. When you select "Sales Overview" from its dropdown, your Sales chart will appear. When you select "Product Performance," it will become blank because its filter condition is no longer met.

Step 4: Build the Dashboard with a Layout Container

Now we assemble everything on a new dashboard.

1. Create a new Dashboard.
2. From the Objects pane, drag a Vertical (or Horizontal) layout container into the view. This container is the stage where our sheets will be swapped out.
3. Drag your "Sales Overview" worksheet into the container.
4. Then drag your "Product Performance" worksheet into the same container. Place it just below the Sales sheet. You should see them stacked inside the container.
5. This is very important: Hide the titles for both worksheets within the container. Right-click on the title of each sheet display and select Hide Title. If you leave the titles visible, the sheets won't truly disappear, and the swapping effect won't work correctly.

Now, try changing the value in your "Select a Tab" parameter on the side. You should see the worksheets perfectly swapping out within the container!

Making It Look and Feel Like Real Tabs

A dropdown or radio button parameter works, but it doesn't look like professional tabs. To complete the effect, we'll create dedicated navigation buttons and link them to the parameter with a Dashboard Action.

Step 1: Create the Navigation Buttons

You'll need one new worksheet for each tab button.

1. Create a new worksheet and name it "Sales Tab Button".
2. Create a simple calculated field called "_Sales Tab" with the string value: "Sales Overview".
3. Drag this field to the Text mark. You'll see the text appear in the view.
4. Go to the Marks card dropdown and change the mark type from "Automatic" to "Shape" or "Square" for a button effect. Format the font, size, and alignment to look like a tab label.
5. Repeat this process to create a second sheet called "Product Tab Button" using a calculated field value of "Product Performance".

Step 2: Add a Parameter Action to the Dashboard

Return to your dashboard. Ditch the distracting parameter control (you can hide it by clicking the X on its box) and let's add our new button sheets.

1. Drag a Horizontal layout container onto your dashboard, placing it above your main content container.
2. Drag your "Sales Tab Button" and "Product Tab Button" sheets into this new horizontal container, side-by-side.
3. Now, go to the top menu and select Dashboard > Actions.
4. In the Actions window, click Add Action > Change Parameter.
5. Configure the action as follows:

• Name: Give it a clear name like "Tab Navigation".
• Source Sheets: Uncheck everything except for your two new button sheets ("Sales Tab Button" and "Product Tab Button").
• Run action on: Select.
• Target Parameter: Choose your "Select a Tab" parameter.
• Field: Select the relevant calculated field that contains the tab name (e.g., "_Sales Tab").

Click OK twice to close the windows.

Now, click on your "Sales Overview" tab button. The parameter's value will change behind the scenes, triggering the filter and showing the correct content. You now have a fully functional, professional-looking tabbed dashboard!

Final Thoughts

Using parameters, calculated fields, and dashboard actions allows you to create a clean, tabbed interface in Tableau that significantly improves user experience and dashboard organization. While there are a few steps involved, mastering this technique moves your dashboards from simple data displays to guided analytical applications.

While mastering techniques like a tabbed interface is rewarding, building complex reports and dashboards in traditional tools can often feel like a full-time project. That's why we made it our mission to automate reporting. With Graphed , we connect directly to your marketing and sales platforms, enabling you to build real-time dashboards and get answers just by asking questions in plain English — no calculated fields or parameter actions required. You can have a complete funnel analysis dashboard done in 30 seconds instead of spending half a day wrestling with settings.