Dimension Filters

Filtering in Tableau is a powerful tool that allows you to focus on specific aspects of your data, helping you refine your analysis and visualizations. With filters, you can control which data appears in your visualization, narrowing it down to specific values, categories, or time periods.

Dimension Filters in Tableau enable you to display or exclude specific categories, values, or groups of data based on the dimensions in your dataset. Key features include:

• Filter by individual values: select specific dimension values to display in your visualization;
• Multiple value filtering: select multiple values to display together, useful for comparing several categories simultaneously;
• Exclude values: remove specific dimension values from your visualization.

Example: Sales by Sub-Category

Let's try an example. We'll create a diagram showing Sales by Sub-Category. You can select a specific Sub-Category by clicking on it with the mouse. To select multiple Sub-Categories, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking. For instance, click on the Sub-Category "Art."

We have two quick options available to us: Keep Only and Exclude. Let's select the Exclude option and look at the result.

As you might have guessed, "Art" has disappeared from the Sub-Category. Also, the Sub-Category dimension has been moved to the Filters area. We don't have to delete anything for the field to be included in the filter area. You can right-click on the Sub-Category field and select Edit Filter to see the filter editing window.

We see that an exclusion filter has been applied to the Sub-Category "Art". It may be necessary to find a more precise selection criterion for the filters. In such cases, the Wildcard tab in the filter editing window can be used.

Let's focus on Sub-Categories that start with the letter "A" (excluding "Art", as it was removed in the previous step).

There are only two Sub-Categories left, as expected!