What is a Bar Chart in Tableau?

A bar chart is one of the most fundamental and powerful ways to visualize your data, especially for making comparisons. This tutorial will show you exactly how to create, customize, and get the most out of bar charts in Tableau. We'll cover everything from the basic vertical bar to more useful variations like stacked and side-by-side charts, so you can start turning a sheet of numbers into a clear, compelling story.

Why Bar Charts are a Data Visualization Staple

Before jumping into the "how," it's worth understanding the "why." Bar charts are incredibly popular because they excel at one specific job: comparing values across different categories. Our brains are wired to be very good at comparing the lengths of bars, making it almost effortless to see which category is bigger, which is smallest, and what the general ranking is.

Consider a few common business questions that a bar chart can answer instantly:

• Which marketing channel brought in the most leads this month?
• What are our top five best-selling products?
• How does our sales performance compare across different regions?
• Which social media platform generates the most website traffic?

Each of these questions involves comparing a numerical value (leads, sales, traffic) across distinct categories (channels, products, regions). This is the perfect job for a bar chart.

Getting Started: Building Your First Bar Chart in Tableau

Creating a basic bar chart is one of the first things most people learn in Tableau because of how intuitive the process is. Let's walk through it step-by-step using Tableau's built-in "Sample - Superstore" dataset.

Understanding Dimensions and Measures

In Tableau, your data is divided into two main types:

• Dimensions: These are your categorical fields. Think of them as the "what" or "who" you are measuring. Examples include Product Name, Region, Customer Segment, or Order Date. They are typically shown in blue in the Data pane.
• Measures: These are your numerical fields that you can perform calculations on. They are the values you are counting, summing, or averaging. Examples include Sales, Profit, Quantity, or Discount. They are usually shown in green.

To build a bar chart, you'll almost always need at least one dimension and one measure.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Simple Bar Chart

Let's build a chart to answer the question: "What are our total sales by product category?"

1. Connect to Data: Open Tableau and in the Connect pane, select "Microsoft Excel." Navigate to your Tableau Repository folder (usually in your Documents) and open the "Sample - Superstore.xls" file. Then drag the "Orders" tab into the workspace.
2. Navigate to a Worksheet: Click on "Sheet 1" at the bottom of the window to go to your worksheet.
3. Add Your Dimension: From the Data pane on the left, find the "Category" dimension. Click and drag it onto the Columns shelf at the top of the screen.
4. Add Your Measure: Now find the "Sales" measure. Click and drag it onto the Rows shelf.

That's it! Tableau immediately renders a vertical bar chart. It intelligently recognizes that pairing a dimension with a measure is best visualized as bars. Each furniture, office supply, and technology category gets its own bar, and the height of the bar represents the sum of sales for that category. Easy, right?

You could also use the "Show Me" panel in the top-right. After adding 'Category' and 'Sales' to your view, simply click the bar chart icon in 'Show Me' and Tableau will arrange the pills correctly for you.

Exploring Different Types of Bar Charts in Tableau

While the standard vertical bar chart is useful, Tableau makes it simple to create variations that can help you uncover deeper insights and tell a more nuanced story with your data.

The Horizontal Bar Chart

A horizontal bar chart is just a vertical chart flipped on its side. It's especially useful when you have long category labels that would get truncated or have to be written at an angle on a vertical chart.

How to create it:

Just swap the pills on your shelves. Drag the "Category" pill from the Columns shelf to the Rows shelf, and the "SUM(Sales)" pill from Rows to Columns. Instantly, your chart reorients itself horizontally.

When to use it:

Imagine you were charting sales by "Product Name" instead of "Category." You'd have dozens or hundreds of long names. A horizontal layout gives those labels plenty of room to breathe, making the chart far more readable.

The Stacked Bar Chart

Stacked bar charts add another layer of detail. They show you the total for a primary category, but also break down that total into its component parts. This helps visualize a "part-to-whole" relationship.

How to create it:

Starting with our original sales-by-category bar chart, let's say we want to see how much each Customer Segment (Consumer, Corporate, Home Office) contributes to those sales.

• Find the "Segment" dimension in the Data pane and drag it directly onto the Color tile in the Marks card. Tableau will now divide each sales bar into colored segments representing each customer type. You still see the total sales for each category, but now you also see its makeup.

A word of caution:

While great for showing totals and composition, stacked charts can make it difficult to compare the performance of individual segments across different bars (except for the segment at the very bottom).

The Side-by-Side Bar Chart

If your goal is to directly compare the individual segments across categories, a side-by-side bar chart (also known as a clustered bar chart) is a much better choice.

How to create it:

Starting with our original chart (Category on Columns, Sales on Rows), drag the "Segment" dimension onto the Columns shelf and place it to the right of the "Category" pill. Tableau will now create clusters of bars, with each cluster representing a product category and a separate bar within it for each customer segment. Now you can easily compare 'Consumer' sales in 'Technology' directly against 'Consumer' sales in 'Furniture'.

Advanced Customization: Making Your Bar Charts Stand Out

A functional bar chart is good, but a well-formatted one is even better. Here are a few simple ways to enhance your charts for clarity and impact.

Adding Colors and Labels

• Color: Dragging any field onto the Color Mark will color your bars. If you drag a dimension like "Region," you'll get a unique color for each region. If you drag a measure like "Profit," you'll get a color gradient (e.g., from orange to blue) showing low-to-high profit.
• Labels: Want to see the exact numbers on your bars? Drag the "Sales" measure onto the Label Mark. The total sales figure will appear directly on each bar, saving your audience from having to estimate values from the axis.

Sorting and Filtering for Better Insights

• Sorting: It's often helpful to sort your bars so the largest or smallest values are immediately obvious. Hover over an axis and a small sort icon will appear. Clicking it allows you to sort ascending or descending. This simple click turns a standard chart into a ranked list.
• Filtering: Maybe you only want to see data for a specific year or region. Drag the dimension you want to filter by (e.g., "Region") onto the Filters shelf. A dialog box will appear, letting you select which values to include or exclude from your view.

Creating a "Bar-in-Bar" Chart

One powerful visualization in Tableau combines two measures into a single bar. Let's say you want to compare your actual 'Sales' to your 'Profit' for each sub-category.

1. Drag 'Sub-Category' to a new sheet's Columns shelf.
2. Drag 'Sales' to the Rows shelf.
3. Now, drag 'Profit' directly onto the 'SUM(Sales)' axis in the view. Tableau will create shared axes and place 'Measure Names' on Color and 'Measure Values' onto the Rows shelf.
4. On the Marks card shelf, change the mark type from Automatic to Bar chart.
5. To create the bar-in-bar effect, drag 'Measure Names' from the Color shelf to the Size shelf. This will make one bar thicker than the other, allowing you to easily see the relationship between measures like Profit and Sales.

This technique is fantastic for comparing values that share a similar scale or a direct relationship.

Final Thoughts

The bar chart is the workhorse of data visualization for a reason: it's simple, immediately understood, and incredibly effective for comparing data. By mastering the basics of creating vertical, horizontal, stacked, and side-by-side bar charts in Tableau, you're well on your way to transforming raw data into clear, actionable reporting.

We know that even an intuitive tool like Tableau can feel daunting when you're just starting, especially when it comes to connecting and preparing your data from various places. That's why we created Graphed. We simplify the entire process by letting you connect your marketing and sales data sources with a few clicks, then ask for charts in plain English. You can just ask something like, "Show me my sales by product category as a bar chart from my Shopify data," and we'll build the live, interactive visualization for you instantly. No steep learning curves, just quick answers.