How to Make a Bar Graph in Tableau
Creating a bar graph in Tableau is often the first visual you’ll build, and for good reason - it’s one of the most effective ways to compare data across different categories. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create a simple bar graph from scratch. We'll then cover how to customize it and build more advanced versions like stacked and side-by-side bar charts.
Why Use a Bar Graph in Tableau?
Before we jump into the steps, let's quickly cover why bar graphs are so popular. They excel at comparing values for a set of categorical items. The length of each bar is proportional to the value it represents, making it incredibly easy for anyone to glance at the chart and understand which categories are performing best or worst.
You might use a bar graph to visualize:
Total sales across different product categories.
Website traffic from various marketing channels (e.g., Organic Search, Social Media, Paid Ads).
Customer counts in different countries or sales regions.
Inventory levels for various products in a warehouse.
They are simple, intuitive, and a cornerstone of effective data visualization. Mastering them is a fundamental step in your Tableau journey.
Before You Start: Understanding the Tableau Workspace
When you first connect your data and open a worksheet in Tableau, the workspace can feel a bit overwhelming. For creating a bar graph, you only need to focus on a few key areas:
Data Pane: On the left-hand side, this is where your data fields are listed. Tableau automatically sorts them into two categories:
Dimensions (Blue): These are qualitative, categorical data. Think of them as the things you want to measure. Examples include Product Category, Region, or Campaign Name.
Measures (Green): These are quantitative, numerical data. Think of them as the numbers you want to analyze. Examples include Sales, Profit, or Number of Clicks.
Shelves (Rows and Columns): At the top of the workspace, these are the primary areas where you will build your chart. You drag dimensions and measures from the Data Pane onto these shelves to construct your visualization.
Marks Card: Located to the left of your blank canvas, this card allows you to control the visual properties of your chart, such as color, size, labels, and tooltips.
That’s it! With just these components, you can create nearly any bar chart you can imagine.
Creating a Simple Bar Graph (Step-by-Step)
Let's build a classic bar graph right now. For this example, we'll imagine we’re using a common dataset to visualize total Sales for each Product Category.
Step 1: Place Your Dimension on a Shelf
First, you need to decide what categories you want to compare. In our case, that’s the Product Category. From the Data Pane, find your dimension field (it will be blue). Click and drag ‘Category’ onto the Columns Shelf.
You'll see headers for each category appear at the top of your view: "Furniture," "Office Supplies," and "Technology."
Step 2: Place Your Measure on the Opposite Shelf
Next, you need to tell Tableau what metric you want to compare across those categories. From the Data Pane, find your measure field (it will be green). Click and drag ‘Sales’ onto the Rows Shelf.
Instantly, Tableau generates a vertical bar graph! It automatically recognizes that showing a measure against a dimension is best visualized this way. You’ll see an axis for Sales on the left, and a bar for each product category reaching the corresponding sales value.
Pro Tip: If you wanted a horizontal bar graph instead, you would simply reverse the fields: put ‘Category’ on the Rows Shelf and ‘Sales’ on the Columns Shelf.
Step 3: Sort Your Bars for Better Insight
By default, your bars will likely be sorted alphabetically. It’s much more insightful to sort them by value. Hover your cursor over the "Sales" axis title. A small sort icon will appear. Click it to sort your categories in descending or ascending order. This simple click immediately reveals your top-performing and lowest-performing categories.
Enhancing Your Bar Graph: Essential Customizations
You have a functional bar graph, but now let’s make it clearer and more professional. You’ll be using the Marks Card for these adjustments.
1. Add Color to Distinguish Categories
Color is a great way to differentiate categories visually. Find the ‘Category’ dimension in your Data Pane again and drag it directly onto the Color tile in the Marks Card.
Each bar will now have a unique color, and a color legend will appear on the right side of your view. This is especially helpful when you have more categories.
2. Display Labels on Your Bars
Instead of forcing your audience to guess the exact value of each bar by looking at the axis, you can place the number directly on it. Find the ‘Sales’ measure in your Data Pane and drag it onto the Label tile in the Marks Card.
The total sales value will now appear on top of (or inside) each bar, making your chart much easier to read at a glance.
3. Clean Up Your Tooltip
When you hover over a bar, a small box called a tooltip appears with details. You can customize this to show more relevant information. Click on the Tooltip tile in the Marks Card. An editor box will pop up. Here, you can rephrase the text, add more data fields, or remove unnecessary information to make the hover-over experience cleaner and more informative.
For example, you could change it from:
Category: TechnologySales: $836,154
To something more conversational:
The Technology category generated $836,154 in total sales.
Diving Deeper: Advanced Bar Graph Types
Once you've mastered the simple bar graph, you can start creating more complex comparisons within your data.
How to Create a Stacked Bar Graph
A stacked bar graph is perfect for showing the proportional contribution of sub-categories to a whole. For instance, what if you wanted to see the breakdown of sales by Region within each Product Category?
Start with your simple bar graph: ‘Category’ on Columns and ‘Sales’ on Rows.
Find the dimension you want to use for the breakdown - in our case, ‘Region’.
Drag ‘Region’ from the Data Pane directly onto the Color tile in the Marks Card.
Tableau automatically updates the chart. Each original bar is now segmented by color, representing the sales volume from each region. A color legend appears, a great way to see not only the total sales per category but also the regional composition of those sales.
How to Create a Side-by-Side (or Grouped) Bar Graph
What if you wanted to directly compare the sales of each region against each other within a category? For that, a side-by-side or grouped bar chart is better.
Start again with your basic chart: ‘Category’ on Columns and ‘Sales’ on Rows.
This time, drag the ‘Region’ dimension from the Data Pane onto the Columns Shelf, right next to the ‘Category’ pill.
Tableau will now create a group of bars for each region within each product category. This arrangement makes it incredibly easy to answer questions like, "Which region performed best in the Technology category?"
Best Practices for Clear and Honest Bar Graphs
Always Start Your Axis at Zero: For bar charts, the length of the bar is what people interpret. Starting the axis at a different number can dramatically exaggerate differences and mislead your audience. Tableau does this by default, but it's a critical rule to remember.
Keep it Simple: Don't cram too many categories into a single bar chart. If the labels become cluttered or unreadable, it’s a sign that you might need to filter your data or choose a different chart type.
Use Color with Purpose: Use color to highlight important information or distinguish categories, not just for decoration. Stick to a simple, clean color palette whenever possible.
Label Clearly: Ensure your chart has a clear title, and that the axes and labels are self-explanatory. The goal is for someone to understand the main point of the chart in just a few seconds without needing any extra explanation.
Final Thoughts
Building bar graphs is a foundational skill in Tableau that lets you quickly compare performance across different segments of your business. By following the steps outlined here, you can move from a simple bar chart to more advanced stacked and grouped views, customizing them along the way to tell a clear and compelling story with your data.
Even in a powerful tool like Tableau, building reports still involves a learning curve and manual steps like dragging and dropping fields. At Graphed, we designed a solution to automate this process. You can simply ask for "a stacked bar chart showing sales by category and region" in plain English, and have a live, interactive visualization built for you in seconds, an easier alternative for teams who need fast answers without the technical overhead.