How to display No Data Found in Tableau
In Tableau dashboards, when data is not produced for the selected filters, it displays a blank page. Tableau does not have any default functionality to display a custom message when there is no data. In this blog, we will discuss how to display a custom message ‘No data found’ in Tableau.
Create a dashboard in Tableau
To explain this concept, I will create a visualization and a dashboard in Tableau.
1. Connect to Sample – Superstore.xls and navigate to Sheet1. If you are new to Tableau, learn how to connect to MS-Excel datasource.
2. From the Data pane on the left, place Order Date on Rows and Sales on Columns. Place Category on Colors to get distinct colors for each Category.
This will create a Line/Trend chart for Sales by Category over various Years. Name this Sheet “Sales Trend by Category”.
3. From the Data pane, select Region and Segment as your filters. Right-click on each and select Show filter. These fields will be displayed as filters on your visualization.
4. To create a new dashboard, from the bottom of your screen, click on the Dashboard icon or from the menu, select Dashboard/New Dashboard.
From the left pane, select Sales Trend by Category.
Tip: To easily manage the objects on the screen, click on the filters of Region and Segment on the right and close/delete them one by one. We can always add them later.
How to display No Data Found Text
1. Now as a next step, take the Text from Objects pane on the left and drop it somewhere on the canvas. On the Edit Text box, you can type the message you want to display, such as “No Data Found”. Since the objects on the canvas, such as Text box and Chart are tiled, they will appear as shown below:
2. Click on the trend chart and change it to floating. Adjust the size of the chart on the canvas.
Now click on the text box and convert it to floating as well. Change the floating order of the Text box to “Send to Back”. Place the text box over the chart.
3. Now you can click on the chart and add the filters back. You will notice when filters are selected, No Data Found will be hidden and not be displayed but when your selection criteria does not produce data, No data found will be displayed.
4. Uncheck All under Region filter. It will uncheck all the values and a ‘No data Found’ message will be displayed instead of a blank page.
Learn how to reset all the filters in Tableau.
About the Author
Chandraish Sinha has 20+ years of experience in Information Technology. He is an accomplished author and has published 11 books covering Business Intelligence related topics such as, Tableau,Power BI, and Qlik. Checkout his Amazon Author profile.
His latest book Excel Basics to Advanced covers all the aspects of MS Excel and provides exercises for self-learning.
Similarly, his recent book, Dashboarding with Tableau, covers all the features in Tableau and includes exercises for self-learning.
He has implemented IT solutions in different domains viz. Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Telecom, Financial and Retail.
He blogs regularly on various IT topics. Check them out in the links given below:
what version of Tableau is this, the text box does not disappear on my version
Text box is available in all the versions of Tableau.
It is on the Dashboard tab under “Objects”.