How to Hide ABC in Tableau

If you've spent any time building text tables in Tableau, you've almost certainly run into the default "ABC" placeholder column. While it serves a structural purpose, it can make an otherwise polished table or dashboard look unfinished. This article will walk you through exactly why that "ABC" column appears and show you several simple, effective methods to hide it.

What 'ABC' Means and Why It Shows Up

First, it's helpful to understand what's happening behind the scenes. The "ABC" you see is simply a placeholder. Tableau uses it when it has a defined space for text values in a table but no data to display there.

You’ll typically see this happen when you are building a text table, also known as a crosstab. Consider this common scenario:

You drag one or more dimensions onto the Rows shelf, like Customer Name or Product Category.
This creates a list of your customer names or product categories. Each one has its own row, creating the structure for your table.
At this point, Tableau has created headers for each row, but the "cells" next to those headers are empty. It knows it needs to show something in that space because a view without at least one measure is just a list of dimension members.
To fill this defined but unpopulated space, it displays the "ABC" placeholder text.

Essentially, the "ABC" placeholder is Tableau’s way of saying, "I've built the framework you asked for with your dimensions, but you haven't given me a measure or a specific text field to put in these cells yet." Dragging a measure like Sales onto the Text property on the Marks card would immediately replace the "ABC" with your sales figures.

But what if you don't want a measure? What if your goal is just to display a list of product categories, an agenda for a meeting, or a list of filter selections on a dashboard without any corresponding number? That's when you need a way to reclaim that space and hide the placeholder.

Method 1: Change the Mark Type to Polygon

This is by far the quickest, most common, and simplest way to remove the "ABC" column. It takes just a few clicks and works perfectly for simple lists and tables where you just want the space to be empty.

Here’s how to do it:

Look at the Marks card in your Tableau worksheet. By default, it's likely set to "Automatic," which Tableau often interprets as "Text" when you build a crosstab.
Click the dropdown menu on the Marks card where it says "Automatic."
From the list of mark types, select Polygon or Square. Most people use Polygon, but either works.

As soon as you make this change, the "ABC" text will disappear. The column itself will remain, but it will now be blank.

Why does this work?

You're essentially changing Tableau's directive for that empty space. Instead of telling it to display text (for which it has none), you're now telling it to draw a shape. However, because you haven't provided any data to define the size, color, or shape of the polygon, Tableau draws nothing. The result is an empty cell where the "ABC" text used to be.

Fine-Tuning the Appearance

After switching to a Polygon mark type, you might notice faint grid lines or a small white square where the text used to be. Here are a few extra steps for a perfectly clean look:

Make the polygon transparent or white: Click on the Color property on the Marks card. A color palette will appear. Reduce the opacity to 0% to make the shape invisible or simply choose white to match the background of your visualization.
Remove grid lines: If you still see lines dividing the empty space, you can remove them through formatting. Right-click anywhere in the view and select Format. In the formatting pane that appears on the left, go to the Borders tab (it looks like a four-paned window icon). Under "Row Divider" and "Column Divider," slide the "Level" slider all the way to the left or select "None" for the pane to get rid of them completely.

Method 2: Use an Empty String Calculated Field

This method is a more "correct" and robust way to solve the problem. Instead of tricking Tableau into drawing an invisible shape, you're giving it exactly what it wants: a text field. The catch is that this text field is intentionally empty.

This approach gives you more predictable behavior, especially in complex dashboards where formatting can sometimes behave unexpectedly.

Here are the steps:

In the Data pane on the left, right-click and select Create Calculated Field.
Give your calculated field a memorable name, like "Blank" or "Empty Column."
In the formula editor box, type two double-quotes with nothing between them: "". This represents an empty string of text.
Click OK to save the calculated field.
Now, locate your new "Blank" field in the Data pane. It will show up under Measures or a new group of fields.
Drag this "Blank" field and drop it directly onto the Text property on the Marks card.

The "ABC" placeholder will be replaced by... nothing. This is because you’ve now explicitly told Tableau what text to put in those cells: an empty string.

This method is excellent because it clearly documents your intention within the workbook. Anyone else who opens it can see the "Blank" calculated field and will immediately understand its purpose. It's also fully stable and won't be impacted if you change the primary mark type of your worksheet to something else later on.

Method 3: Create a Narrow ‘Dummy’ Column

Sometimes you don't just want to hide the ABC text, you want to create a slender, empty column to serve as a spacer between two other columns for visual separation. This is common when you’re building dashboard tables that need a bit more breathing room than the default formatting allows.

This technique uses the same calculated field as Method 2 but applies it differently.

Here’s how you can do it:

First, create your empty calculated field as described in Method 2. Remember, the formula is simply "".
Instead of dragging it to the Marks card, drag the new "Blank" field to the Columns shelf. Place it between the two columns you want to separate.
This will create a new, wide column with an empty header. To hide the header, right-click on the "Blank" pill on the Columns shelf and uncheck Show Header. Now the header text is gone, but the empty column remains.
Finally, hover your mouse over the right border of your new blank column until the cursor changes to a resizing arrow.
Click and drag the border to the left until the column is as narrow as you want it to be. You can make it just a few pixels wide to create a very subtle but effective spacer.

This technique is a fantastic formatting trick to have in your back pocket for designing professional-looking and easy-to-read tables and dashboards.

Method 4: Manually Resize the ABC Column

The final method isn’t so much hiding the "ABC" as it is physically shrinking the column it lives in until it's no longer visible. This is the least elegant solution and is generally not recommended for finished dashboards, but it can work in a pinch if you're exploring data quickly and aren't concerned with perfect aesthetics.

To do this:

Go to the table where the "ABC" column is visible.
Hover your cursor over the right-hand border of the header for that column in your worksheet.
The cursor will change into a vertical bar with two horizontal arrows (the resizing cursor).
Click and drag the border all the way to the left, collapsing the column until it's just a thin vertical line.

While this is fast, its biggest downside is the lack of precision. It can be difficult to size it just right, and depending on the dashboard layout, it might not fully disappear. It also tends to behave unpredictably if the size of your dashboard components is set to automatically fill a container. Use this method sparingly and favor the Polygon or Calculated Field methods for your final reports.

Final Thoughts

Knowing how to hide the ABC placeholder is a small but essential Tableau skill for creating clean, professional visualizations. Whether you choose the quick polygon trick for a simple list or the more robust calculated field method for a dashboard, you now have the tools needed to take full control of your text table's appearance.

This kind of hands-on formatting is a common part of the process when using traditional BI tools. We built Graphed to eliminate these time-consuming manual adjustments. Instead of dragging and dropping pills, fixing placeholders, and tweaking formatting settings, you can simply describe the dashboard you want in conversational language. For instance, prompting "show a real-time sales pipeline from Salesforce" instantly generates the full report, no cleanup required. With Graphed , the whole process of getting insights is immediate, so you can spend less time fixing "ABC"s and more time acting on your data.