How to "Split-up" a long Bar Chart in Tableau

Every so often, an Analyst might run across a situation where they need to compare values among a very long list of categories. This is simple enough to accomplish in Tableau, but there is generally a pitfall....you might have to scroll....

So what do you do from here? One option might be to limit the number of categories, say to a Top 10, or Top 25. But what if you don't want to do that, what if you want to show every category in a manner that still allows for comparison in a single view? What do you do? Well, you split up the categories into smaller sub-sets.

The visualization above is an approach used to "fit" many categories into a single view for comparison. And to create this in Tableau is pretty simple, and uses the same technique as a Trellis Chart, minus an X Dimension.

First, I am going to create a Parameter that will allow me to control the number of Rows that appear in each Pane, this isn't necessary, I just like the flexibility.

Second, create the "X" Calculated Field.

If this looks familiar, it's because it probably is. The calculation above is the roughly the same formula you would see in a Dynamic Trellis chart, except we are explicitly telling Tableau how many Rows to create.

Third, we create the "Y" calculated field.

From this point, we just need to Change these fields to Discrete and drag them onto the Canvas. From there, we simply need to calculate using the Dimension, and drag the Dimension on the Text Mark.

Now you can do some cleanup, hide the X/Y headers, add a Rank field to the Label shelf and fit the chart, and that's it!

Hope this helps.

Rody