How to Remove Subtotals in Tableau

Building a viz in Tableau often involves creating data tables or crosstabs, which are fantastic for reviewing your numbers. But by default, Tableau is a bit too helpful - it automatically adds subtotals and grand totals to these tables. While useful in many cases, sometimes they just add visual noise or aren't relevant to the story you're telling. This guide will walk you through several easy ways to remove them, giving you complete control over your final report.

Why Would You Want to Remove Subtotals?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." While totals are a sensible default, there are plenty of reasons to hide them:

• Cleaner Presentation: Sometimes, less is more. For a clean, minimalist dashboard, removing extra numbers can improve readability and help your audience focus on the details that matter most.
• Focusing on Granular Data: If your analysis is about comparing individual rows - like the weekly performance of different ad campaigns or sales reps - subtotals can be a distraction. Your goal is to see the line-item detail, not the aggregated sums.
• Using Custom Calculations: You might be creating your own custom totals. For example, instead of a simple SUM, you may need to show an average, a median, or a more complex Level of Detail (LOD) calculation. Default subtotals would be redundant or even misleading in this context.
• Specific Table Layouts: For certain financial reports or structured layouts, you may need a table without any subtotals to fit a specific formatting requirement.

Whatever your reason, taking control of totals is a fundamental skill for making your Tableau dashboards look clean and professional.

Method 1: The Quickest Fix Using the Analysis Menu

The most direct way to get rid of all subtotals and grand totals at once is through Tableau's top-level menu. This is the perfect approach when you want to remove all totals from your worksheet in one go.

Let's imagine you have a simple table showing Sales revenue broken down by Region and then by Product Category. Tableau will automatically add subtotals for each region and a grand total at the bottom.

Here's how to turn them off:

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Navigate to the top menu bar in your Tableau workbook.
2. Click on the Analysis menu item.
3. Hover over Totals. A sub-menu will appear with several options checked by default.
4. To remove all row subtotals, simply click on Add all Subtotals to uncheck it.
5. To remove the grand totals at the end of your rows or columns, uncheck Show Row Grand Totals or Show Column Grand Totals respectively.

By unchecking these options, the subtotals for each region and the grand totals should instantly disappear, leaving you with a clean table showing only the granular detail.

This "all-or-nothing" method is great for simplicity and speed. However, what if you want to keep some subtotals but remove others?

Method 2: Remove Subtotals for a Specific Field Only

Sometimes you need more granular control. For example, you might have a hierarchy with three levels, like Region > State > City. Maybe you want to see the subtotal for each Region, but you don't care about the subtotal for each State. Using the Analysis menu won't work here because it removes everything.

Instead, you can remove subtotals for a specific dimension pill right from the Rows or Columns shelf.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. On your worksheet, find the discrete dimension pill (the blue pills) on the Rows or Columns shelf. In our example, 'Region' is the pill for which we want to remove the subtotals.
2. Right-click on the desired pill (e.g., the 'Region' pill).
3. In the context menu that appears, simply click on Subtotals to uncheck it.

The subtotals associated with that specific field will vanish, while any other subtotals (from other fields) or grand totals will remain. This approach is incredibly useful for fine-tuning complex tables and provides the level of control you often need when building detailed reports.

A Common Sticking Point: When "Subtotals" is Grayed Out

Have you ever right-clicked a pill and found that the Subtotals option is grayed out and unclickable? This is a very common point of confusion for new Tableau users.

Here's the rule: Tableau can only create a subtotal for a dimension if there is another dimension nested inside of it.

Subtotals are, by definition, an aggregation of the "sub-categories" within a category. If a dimension pill is the last (innermost) one on a shelf, there's nothing for it to subtotal. Therefore, the option will be unavailable.

For example, if you have this setup on your Rows shelf:

[Region] > [State] > [City]

• You can turn subtotals on or off for Region (it subtotals the States).
• You can turn subtotals on or off for State (it subtotals the Cities).
• You cannot turn subtotals on or off for City because it's the last pill in the hierarchy. The option will be grayed out.

If you're ever stuck, just check the order of your pills on the Rows and Columns shelves. The answer usually lies there.

Method 3: A Visual Trick Using the Format Pane

This last method doesn't technically remove the subtotals, but it hides them completely. This can be a useful backdoor approach if the other methods aren't working as you expect or if you need to solve a particularly tricky formatting puzzle. You essentially make the subtotal rows and text invisible.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Right-click on one of the subtotals in your view and select Format... This will open the Format pane on the left side of your screen.
2. At the top of the Format pane, go to the Borders icon (it looks like a four-pane window grid).
3. Under the Row Divider section, drag the Level slider all the way to the top. This will allow you to format the dividers next to your subtotals.
4. Click the Pane dropdown and set the border to None. This will remove the dividing lines around the subtotal row, helping it blend in.
5. Now, go back to the top of the Format pane and select the Shading icon (it looks like a paint bucket).
6. In the Row Banding section, make sure the Pane and Header color match your worksheet background (usually white). Also, turn banding off by dragging the Band Size slider all the way to the left.
7. Finally, right-click the actual text of one of your subtotals in the view, choose Format... and go to the Font section. Set the font color to match your worksheet background (again, usually white).

Your subtotals are now completely invisible! It's a bit of a workaround, but it's a powerful trick to keep in your back pocket for those times when you need total control over the appearance of a table while keeping its underlying structure intact.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the display of totals is essential for creating clean, effective, and professional-looking dashboards in Tableau. Whether you use the quick Analysis menu for a global change, the right-click method for targeted control over a specific field, or a formatting trick for a purely visual solution, you now have the tools to make your tables look exactly how you want.

While fine-tuning visuals in tools like Tableau is a powerful skill, we realize it's often just one small step in the much larger, more time-consuming process of reporting. Creating the reports is one thing, but connecting all your marketing and sales platforms, cleaning the data, and stitching it all together is often where weeks disappear. We built Graphed to automate that entire process. You can connect your data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce in seconds, then use plain English to ask for the dashboard you need. Instead of clicking through menus to remove subtotals, you can just ask, "Show me my sales by region and product, as a table," and get a clean, live-updating visualization in return. If you're ready to get out of the reporting weeds and back to strategy, give Graphed a try.