How to Hide Tabs in Tableau

Creating a clean, polished Tableau dashboard often means guiding your audience through the data, not just giving them a collection of charts. One of the best ways to do this is by hiding the individual worksheet tabs. This article will walk you through several methods for creating a professional, slick, and seamless tab-free experience in Tableau.

Why Bother Hiding Tabs in Tableau?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Hiding worksheet tabs isn't just about aesthetics, it’s a core principle of creating guided analytics, where you control the user's path through the data story you've built. Here are the key benefits:

• A Cleaner User Experience: Too many tabs can look cluttered and overwhelming. By hiding them, you present a single, focused view that feels more like a custom application and less like a spreadsheet.
• Controlled Navigation: When tabs are visible, users can click around in any order they wish. This can lead to confusion if your analysis is meant to be consumed in a specific sequence. Hiding tabs puts you in the driver's seat, allowing you to use interactive buttons and actions to guide them from one insight to the next.
• Improved Professionalism: A dashboard without tabs immediately signals a higher level of polish and thought. It shows you’ve intentionally designed the navigation flow, which inspires more confidence in your work.
• Prevent Accidental Clicks: It prevents users from navigating to underlying worksheets that were only meant for building dashboard components, not for direct viewing.

Method 1: The Simple Click (When Publishing to Tableau Server/Cloud)

This is by far the easiest and most common way to hide tabs. The catch? It only applies when you publish your workbook to Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online), or Tableau Public. You won't see the change in Tableau Desktop itself.

This method works by telling Tableau not to render the tab navigation at the bottom of the view when it's displayed in a web browser.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Finish Your Dashboard: Put the final touches on your dashboards and any underlying worksheets in Tableau Desktop.
2. Publish the Workbook: Go to File > Publish Workbook... This will open the publishing dialog window.
3. Locate Permissions and Sheet Options: In the dialog box, you'll configure the project, name, and other settings. Near the bottom, you'll see options for "Sheets."
4. Uncheck "Show sheets as tabs": This is the crucial step. By default, this box is usually checked. Click it to deselect it. The exact wording and location might vary slightly between Tableau versions, but it’s almost always in the main publishing dialog.
5. Publish and View: Click the "Publish" button. Now, when you open the workbook on Tableau Server or Cloud, the tabs at the bottom will be gone! The user will only see the dashboards you specifically selected to publish.

Important consideration: If you hide the tabs, you must provide an alternative way for users to navigate between dashboards. This is where navigation buttons come into play.

Method 2: Creating a Seamless Experience with Navigation Buttons

This method is the gold standard for creating professional, tab-free dashboards. You create your own navigation buttons directly on the dashboard canvas, giving you complete control over the user journey. It's the perfect companion to Method 1.

Think of it as building a small website. You have a "home" page (a summary dashboard) and then buttons that take you to other "pages" (detailed dashboards).

How to Build Navigation:

1. Identify Your Navigation Path: First, plan a logical flow. Do you want users to go from a high-level summary to category details, and then to a product-specific view? Sketch it out.
2. Add a Navigation Object: In the dashboard pane (on the left side), under the "Objects" section, find the Navigation object. Drag and drop it onto your dashboard canvas where you'd like your button to appear.
3. Configure the Button: A configuration dialog ('Edit Button') will pop up. Here's what to set:
4. Rinse and Repeat: Add navigation buttons to each of your dashboards. Crucially, always include a "Back" or "Home" button so users don't get stuck in a detailed view with no way out.

When you combine button-based navigation with hiding tabs upon publishing, the result is a truly professional and intuitive guided analytics experience.

Method 3: The URL Parameter Power Move

This is a more technical but highly effective method, especially useful when you are embedding a Tableau dashboard into a website, portal, or a SharePoint page.

You can control the visibility of tabs (and other elements, like the toolbar) by adding a simple parameter to the end of your dashboard's URL.

How to Use the Tabs URL Parameter:

The parameter you need is :tabs=no.

You simply append this to the end of the URL for your Tableau view.

1. Get Your Dashboard URL: Navigate to your dashboard on Tableau Server or Cloud. Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. It will look something like this:

http://your-tableau-server/views/SalesDashboard_123/Summary

1. Add the Parameter: To hide the tabs, add ?:tabs=no right after the main view name.

http://your-tableau-server/views/SalesDashboard_123/Summary?:tabs=no

The ? tells Tableau that you're about to start adding parameters. If you ever need to add another parameter (for example, to hide the toolbar as well), you use an ampersand (&) to chain them together.

Example: Hiding Tabs and the Toolbar

http://your-tableau-server/views/SalesDashboard_123/Summary?:tabs=no&:toolbar=false

This technique is fantastic because it allows you to display the same dashboard in different ways depending on the context, all without having to republish it with different settings.

Method 4: Telling a Story with Story Points

Tableau's "Story" feature is specifically designed for presenting a sequence of insights in a linear, narrative-driven format. A great side effect of using Stories is that they inherently hide the worksheet tabs.

Instead of tabs, users navigate through your analysis using the captions band at the top, called the "story navigator." This method is ideal for presentations or reports where you want to walk stakeholders through findings step-by-step.

How to Use a Story to Hide Tabs:

1. Create a New Story: Click the "New Story" icon at the bottom of the Tableau Desktop window (it looks like a book).
2. Add Views to Your Story Points: On the left, you'll see a list of all your existing worksheets and dashboards. Drag and drop a sheet onto the Story canvas to create your first story point.
3. Add Narrative: For each story point, you can add a title and descriptive text in the navigator band at the top. This is where you explain the insight shown in the view.
4. Create More Points: Click "New Blank Point" in the navigator band and drag another sheet onto it to continue your story.
5. Publish the Story: When you publish the workbook, just publish the Story itself. Users will interact with the navigator instead of worksheet tabs, giving you that clean, focused view you're after.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to hide tabs in Tableau is a simple change that elevates your dashboards from good to great. Whether you're unchecking a box during publishing, building your own custom navigation, manipulating URL parameters, or telling a data story, the goal is always the same: to create a clear, guided, and professional experience for your audience.

While mastering these Tableau techniques is a powerful way to make your reports slicker, we know the manual setup and maintenance can become a major time sink. We created Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require hours of dashboard configuration. By connecting your data sources and simply describing what you want to see in plain English, you can generate real-time, interactive dashboards in seconds. It’s about spending your time acting on insights, not getting stuck wrangling them.