How to Add a Tooltip to a Dimension in Tableau

Adding a little extra context to your Tableau visualizations can be the difference between a good dashboard and a great one. While Tableau makes it simple to display measures in a tooltip, you might have noticed it’s not as straightforward for dimensions. This guide breaks down exactly how to add descriptive text, additional categories, and other useful details to your dimension tooltips, making your dashboards more intuitive and insightful for your audience.

Why Bother with Tooltips on Dimensions?

In Tableau, dimensions are the categorical fields that slice and dice your data - think things like Product Category, Customer Name, or Region. Measures are the numbers you’re analyzing, like Sales, Profit, or Quantity. When a user hovers over a bar in a chart, they’re hovering over a mark that represents a dimension member (e.g., the "Furniture" category).

By default, the tooltip for that bar will show the dimension itself ("Furniture") and the associated measure ("Sales: $500,000"). But what if you wanted to show who is responsible for the Furniture category, which region it sells best in, or the total number of unique products it contains? That’s where adding dimensions to your tooltip comes in. It allows you to:

• Provide Extra Context: Show related information without cluttering the main visualization with more text or additional charts.
• Improve User Experience: Let your users explore the data more deeply on their own, answering follow-up questions directly on the dashboard.
• Tell a Richer Story: Pack more information into a single chart, turning a simple bar graph into a multi-layered analytical tool.

The core challenge is that Tableau only includes fields in the tooltip that are active in the view. If a dimension isn't on the Rows, Columns, or Marks card, it's out of sight and out of mind. Let’s look at a few practical methods to bring that hidden information to the forefront.

Method 1: The Drag-and-Drop Approach (The Easiest Way)

The most direct way to get a dimension into your tooltip is by dragging it onto the Tooltip mark. This tells Tableau, "Hey, I want to associate this piece of information with every mark on my screen, even if it's not defining the structure of my chart."

Step-by-Step Instructions

Let's use the Sample - Superstore dataset included with Tableau for this example. Imagine we have a simple bar chart showing Sales by Sub-Category.

1. Build a Basic Chart: Drag Sub-Category to the Columns shelf and SUM(Sales) to the Rows shelf. You'll get a standard vertical bar chart.
2. Identify the Dimension to Add: Let’s say for each sub-category, we want the tooltip to also show the main Category it belongs to. Currently, Category isn't in our view, so it won’t appear on hover.
3. Drag to the Tooltip Mark: Find the Category dimension in the Data Pane on the left. Click and drag it directly onto the Tooltip button on the Marks card.

That’s it! Now, when you hover over the "Chairs" sub-category bar, the tooltip popup will automatically include a line for "Category: Furniture."

Editing the Tooltip for Clarity

Tableau’s default tooltip is functional, but you can make it much more readable and professional with a minute of editing.

1. Click on the Tooltip button on the Marks card to open the editor.
2. You'll see plain text mixed with field codes like <,Sub-Category> and <SUM(Sales)>. You can treat this like a simple text editor.
3. Rewrite the tooltip to form a clean, readable sentence. You can use the Insert button at the top-right to be sure you’re using the correct fields.

For example, you could change this default text:

Sub-Category: <,Sub-Category>,
Category: <,Category>,
Sales: <,SUM(Sales)>,

To something more conversational:

The <,Sub-Category>, sub-category, part of the <strong>,<,Category>,</strong>, department, generated sales of <strong>,<SUM(Sales)>,</strong>.

This simple change makes the information much easier to digest on the fly.

Pro Tip: By default, Tableau might aggregate a dimension in the tooltip with an asterisk (*) if there are multiple values (e.g., if a sub-category existed in multiple regions). To fix this, you might need to adjust the attribute of the field on the Tooltip mark. You can click the little down-arrow on the field's pill and change it from ATTR(Dimension) to just "Dimension" if appropriate for your view level of detail.

Method 2: Using Viz-in-Tooltip for a Detailed Breakdown

What if you want to show more than just one or two extra dimensions? Perhaps you want a mini-report that appears on hover, like a full list of top-selling products within that sub-category. For this, the "Viz in Tooltip" feature is perfect.

The concept is simple: you create a second, separate worksheet formatted to be a "tooltip," and then tell your main chart to display that entire worksheet when you hover over a mark.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Let's expand on our Sales by Sub-Category chart. We want to hover over a sub-category bar and see a breakdown of sales by Region inside the tooltip.

Part 1: Build the Main "Primary" Worksheet

1. Create your main chart. We’ll stick with our bar chart of SUM(Sales) by Sub-Category. Let’s call this sheet "Primary Chart".

Part 2: Build the "Tooltip" Worksheet

1. Create a new worksheet. Let's name it "Tooltip - Region Breakdown". This naming helps keep your workbook organized.
2. This sheet will become our tooltip, so we should build a view that breaks down our data by Region. Drag Region to Columns and SUM(Sales) to Rows to create a small bar chart.
3. To ensure this worksheet is filtered dynamically, drag Sub-Category from the Data pane onto the Filters shelf. Don’t select anything yet, just click OK. This step is crucial because it makes the tooltip context-aware.
4. Finally, format this tooltip sheet. You might want to hide the headers, change the colors, and resize it to look compact. Sizing it to "Entire View" often works well.

Part 3: Combine them in the Primary Worksheet's Tooltip

1. Go back to your "Primary Chart" worksheet.
2. Click on the Tooltip mark to open the editor.
3. Clear out the existing text.
4. Click the Insert button at the top-right corner of the editor window.
5. Under the menu that appears, hover over Sheets and select your newly created "Tooltip - Region Breakdown".
6. Tableau will insert some code that looks like this:

<Sheet name="Tooltip - Region Breakdown" maxwidth="300" maxheight="300" filter="<All Fields>">,

Now, when you go back to your "Primary Chart" and hover over the "Chairs" bar, a small, fully rendered bar chart showing the sales for Chairs broken down by each region will appear inside the tooltip!

The filter="<All Fields>" part is the magic here. It tells Tableau to automatically filter the tooltip worksheet based on the dimensions of the mark you are hovering over in the primary chart.

Method 3: Creating Custom Labels with Calculated Fields

Calculated fields open up a world of possibilities for dynamic and conditional tooltips. Instead of just showing raw dimension values, you can combine them, reformat them, or display different messages based on your data.

Example 1: Combining Multiple Dimensions into One Sentence

Let's say you want a tooltip on a customer map to give a nice, clean location summary. Instead of showing "City: New York" and "State: New York" on separate lines, you can combine them.

1. Right-click anywhere in the Data Pane and select Create Calculated Field.
2. Name it something descriptive, like "Customer Full Location".
3. Enter the following formula:

[City] + ", " + [State]

This new field is now a dimension! Drag Customer Full Location to the Tooltip mark on your map worksheet.

Edit your tooltip to include a line like: Location: <,Customer Full Location>,

Example 2: Creating a Conditional Dimension

You can also create a new dimension that acts like a performance label, based on where a measure falls.

1. Create another Calculated Field and name it "Profitability Label".
2. Enter a formula with IF/ELSE logic:

IF SUM([Profit]) > 10000 THEN 'Highly Profitable'
ELSEIF SUM([Profit]) > 0 THEN 'Profitable'
ELSE 'Unprofitable'
END

1. Drag this new Profitability Label field onto the Tooltip mark of your Sales by Sub-Category chart.
2. Now, when you hover, you can see not just the sales and profit numbers, but also a simple, human-readable tag categorizing the performance of that sub-category.

Best Practices for Readable and Effective Tooltips

• Keep it Clean: The goal is to provide a quick hit of information, not everything at once. Keep a tight focus on the most relevant details.
• Form and Function: Use bolding and color changes to draw attention to the most important parts of the tooltip. In the editor, you can change text properties just like in a word processor.
• Turn Off Command Buttons: By default, Tableau includes "Keep Only," "Exclude," and other command buttons in the tooltip. For a cleaner, more report-like feel, uncheck the "Include command buttons" option at the bottom of the tooltip editor.
• Tell a story: A tooltip is a perfect place to use full sentences and add context. Instead of just displaying Profit: $5,432, try something like Total Profit Contribution: <SUM(Profit)>,. Simple framing makes a huge difference.

Final Thoughts

Adding a dimension to a tooltip in Tableau transforms your visualizations from static graphics into interactive investigative tools. Whether you're using a simple drag-and-drop, an embedded viz-in-tooltip for detailed breakdowns, or a calculated field for dynamic text, these techniques will dramatically enhance how users engage with your data and find their own insights.

While powerful tools like Tableau offer deep customization for data visualization, we know that getting to the point of fine-tuning tooltips can often be a long road that starts with connecting data and painstakingly building out each report. We built Graphed to short-circuit that process entirely. Instead of configuring dashboards manually, you can just ask questions in plain English, like "show me sales by sub-category as a bar chart," and get a live, interactive visualization instantly. It’s perfect for answering those quick follow-up questions without stopping your analysis to build a new report from scratch.