How to Add Hyperlink to Text in Tableau

Adding a clickable link turns your Tableau dashboard from a static report into a dynamic, interactive resource for your team. Instead of just presenting data, you can guide users to external websites, detailed reports, or source materials with a simple click. This article will show you exactly how to add and customize hyperlinks in Tableau using URL Actions.

Why Bother Adding Hyperlinks?

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Hyperlinks are a simple feature with a big impact on your dashboard's usability. They serve as a bridge between the insights you're presenting and the next logical action your user might want to take.

Consider a few practical scenarios:

• Marketing Analytics: A dashboard shows campaign performance by social media channel. You can add a link so that clicking on "Facebook Ads" or "Twitter" takes the user directly to the live ad campaign in that platform's manager.
• Sales Performance: A dashboard displays sales numbers by representative. Each rep's name could be a hyperlink that opens their profile or current pipeline in Salesforce.
• E-commerce Reporting: A product performance dashboard could include links that open the live product page on your Shopify store, allowing marketing managers to review the page content and details instantly.

In all these cases, a simple hyperlink eliminates friction, saves time, and makes your dashboard a central hub for action, not just observation.

The Foundation: Understanding Tableau Actions

In Tableau, interactivity is driven by something called Actions. An Action is a user-initiated command - like a click or a hover - that causes something to happen in your visualization. There are a few different types of actions, but the one we need for hyperlinks is the URL Action.

A URL Action tells Tableau: "When a user interacts with this specific part of the viz, open this specific web address." The user's interaction (like clicking a data point) provides the trigger, and the URL you define is the destination. It's a simple but powerful concept.

Method 1: Adding a Static Hyperlink to a Worksheet

Let's start with the basics: adding the same link to every mark (like a point on a line chart or a bar in a bar chart) on a worksheet. This is great for linking to a general help document or a main project website.

We'll use the classic Sample - Superstore data set for our example.

1. Set Up a Simple Visualization

Create a basic bar chart showing Sales by Sub-Category. Drag Sub-Category to Columns and SUM(Sales) to Rows.

1. Open the Actions Menu

At the top of the Tableau window, navigate to the Worksheet menu, and then click on Actions.... This will open the Actions configuration dialog box.

1. Create a New URL Action

In the bottom-left of the dialog box, click the Add Action >, then select Go to URL... from the dropdown list. This opens the editor for your new hyperlink.

1. Configure the URL Action

This is where you define how the hyperlink works. You'll see several options:

• Name: Give your action a descriptive name, like "Link to Company Website." This is helpful when you have multiple actions on a single dashboard.
• Source Sheets: Ensure your current worksheet (e.g., "Sheet 1") is selected. This tells Tableau which visualization will trigger the action.
• Run action on: This determines how the user triggers the link. You have three choices:

For now, choose Select.

• URL: This is the destination web address. For a static link, simply type or paste the full URL. For this example, let's enter https://www.tableau.com.

1. Test Your Hyperlink

Click OK to close both dialog boxes. Now, go back to your worksheet and click on any of the sub-category bars. A new browser tab should open to the Tableau website. Every bar on your chart now has the same hyperlink.

Method 2: Making Your Hyperlinks Dynamic

Creating static links is helpful, but the real power comes from building dynamic URLs using data from your visualization. This allows each mark to link to a unique, relevant destination.

Imagine you want to click on the "Phones" sub-category and have it perform a Google search for "Phones" specifically. Here's how to set that up.

Step-by-Step Guide to Dynamic URLs

1. Edit Your Existing Action

Go back to the Actions menu (Worksheet > Actions...). Select the action you just created and click Edit.

1. Modify the URL with a Field Value

Delete the static URL you entered before. We're going to build a new one. A standard Google search URL looks like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=SEARCH_TERM.

Type https://www.google.com/search?q= into the URL text box. Then, instead of typing a search term, click the small arrow icon >, located to the right of the text box. This reveals a list of all the fields available in your visualization.

Select Sub-Category from the list. Your URL will now look like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=<Sub-Category>

The code <Sub-Category> is a placeholder. When a user clicks on a specific mark, Tableau will automatically replace this placeholder with the value of the Sub-Category for that mark.

1. Test the Dynamic Link

Click OK twice to close the menus. Now, click on the bar for "Chairs." Your browser will open a Google search for "Chairs." Click on the "Phones" bar, and it will search for "Phones." Each mark now links to a custom destination based on the data it represents.

Method 3: Adding Hyperlinks Directly to a Dashboard

Usually, you'll be adding links to a dashboard that contains multiple worksheets, not just one. The process is almost identical, but you initiate it from the Dashboard view.

1. Create a simple dashboard and add your "Sales by Sub-Category" worksheet to it.
2. From the dashboard view, go to the top menu and select Dashboard > Actions....
3. Just like before, click Add Action >, then Go to URL....
4. The configuration window looks the same, but the Source Sheets section is now more important. By default, it might select all sheets on your dashboard. You can uncheck some to specify that the hyperlink should only work when a user clicks on a particular worksheet within the dashboard.

This approach gives you fine-grained control over which parts of your dashboard are interactive.

Method 4: Making Text Appear as a Clickable Link

So far, the user has to click on a data mark (like a bar or a point) to trigger the link. But what if you want to display an actual text label that looks and feels like a standard web hyperlink?

This requires a slightly clever workbook-level trick, but it's very effective.

1. Create a New Worksheet for the Link

Start a new, dedicated worksheet. We will use this sheet solely to hold our hyperlink text.

1. Create Two Calculated Fields

First, create a calculated field to serve as the display text.

• Name it "Link Display Text."
• The formula is simply the text you want users to click, in quotation marks. For example, "View Company Website."

Second, create a calculated field for the URL itself.

• Name it: "URL Destination."
• The formula is the destination website. Example: "https://www.tableau.com"

1. Configure the Worksheet

• Drag the "Link Display Text" calculated field onto the Text mark on the Marks card.
• Drag the "URL Destination" calculated field onto the Detail mark on the Marks card. This makes the URL available to our action without displaying it. The text "View Company Website" should now appear in your worksheet.

1. Format the Text

Click on the Text mark on the Marks card, then click the three dots (…)**) to open the text editor. Here, you can change the font color to blue and underline it to make it look like a standard hyperlink. After you're done, hide the sheet title, headers, and any gridlines to make it clean.

1. Add the URL Action

Go to Worksheet > Actions... and add a new URL Action. Configure it as follows:

• Run action on: Select
• URL: Click the arrow >, and insert the "URL Destination" field from your data source. The URL should be <URL Destination>.

1. Place it on Your Dashboard

Finally, drag this new worksheet onto your dashboard wherever you want the hyperlink to appear. Now you have a clean, familiar-looking text link that users can click.

Final Thoughts

Using URL Actions is a fantastic way to elevate your dashboards, making them more resourceful and actionable for your team. By inserting dynamic fields into your URLs, you can connect your summarized data in Tableau to the detailed sources, pages, and systems your business runs on every day.

While Tableau is an excellent tool for deep visual analysis, getting all your data connected and organized in the first place is often the biggest hurdle. We found that marketing and sales teams were spending hours manually exporting CSVs and stitching together reports. That's why we created Graphed . Our platform instantly connects to all your critical data sources - from Google Analytics and Shopify to Salesforce and Facebook Ads - and lets you build real-time dashboards just by asking questions in plain English. You can skip the tedious setup and go straight to getting the answers you need to grow your business.