How to Add Marks in Tableau

Adding marks in Tableau is the key to turning a boring table of numbers into a clear and insightful visualization. The Marks Card is your control panel for every visual element in your chart, from color and size to labels and tooltips. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to use the Marks Card to create effective charts that tell a compelling story with your data.

What Exactly Is the Tableau Marks Card?

In Tableau, a “mark” is a visual representation of one or more rows in your data source. Think of marks as the building blocks of any chart. A bar in a bar chart is a mark, a point on a line graph is a mark, and a circle in a scatter plot is a mark. The Marks Card is the area in the Tableau worksheet interface where you control the properties of these marks.

You’ll find it located to the left of your main view (the canvas where your chart is built), right below the Filters shelf. At first glance, it might seem simple, but this little box packs a lot of power.

The Marks Card contains several key properties, which are often called "shelves" in Tableau terminology:

• Dropdown Menu: This is where you select the fundamental type of mark you want to use (e.g., Bar, Line, Square, Shape). Tableau's "Automatic" setting is pretty smart, but you can override it here for more control.
• Color: Controls the color of your marks. You can assign different colors to categories or create color gradients based on a measure.
• Size: Controls the size of your marks. A higher value on a measure can make a mark larger or smaller.
• Label: Determines the text label displayed on or next to each mark.
• Detail: Used to break the view down into a greater level of granularity. It separates marks without assigning them different colors, sizes, or shapes.
• Tooltip: Customizes the information that appears in the pop-up box when you hover your mouse over a mark.
• Shape: Appears when you select "Shape" as the mark type and allows you to assign different shapes to different data points.
• Path: Appears for Line and Polygon mark types and controls the order in which data points are connected.

Let's walk through how to use each of these properties to build and enhance your visualizations.

How to Change the Mark Type

The most basic function of the Marks Card is to define the type of chart you’re building. Tableau’s default “Automatic” setting analyzes the fields you have on the Rows and Columns shelves and makes an educated guess. For example, if you place a date field on Columns and a measure on Rows, Tableau will usually create a line chart.

However, you may want to choose a different chart type. Here’s how:

1. Drag the fields you want to visualize onto the Columns and Rows shelves. For this example, let's use the Sample - Superstore dataset. Drag Order Date to Columns and Sales to Rows. It will likely default to a line chart.
2. On the Marks Card, click the dropdown menu that currently says "Automatic."
3. Select a different mark type from the list. If you choose "Bar," the line chart will instantly transform into a bar chart. If you choose "Area," you'll get an area chart.

This simple dropdown is the first step in deciding how you want your data to be represented. Bar charts are great for comparing categories, while line charts are perfect for showing trends over time. Experiment with different mark types to see which one best communicates your message.

Fine-Tuning Visuals with Mark Properties

Changing the chart type is just the beginning. The real power comes from using the different property shelves on the Marks Card to encode more data into your view. This is how you add layers of information to a single chart.

Using the Color Shelf

The Color shelf helps your audience distinguish between different segments of your data. You can use it in two main ways:

1. With a Dimension (Categorical Data)

Dragging a dimension like Region or Category to the Color shelf will assign a unique color to each item in that dimension. This is perfect for breaking down a total into its component parts.

Example: Start with a bar chart showing Sales by Category. Now, drag the Region field from the data pane directly onto the Color property on the Marks Card. Your bars will instantly become stacked bars, with each color representing a different region. A legend will automatically appear to the right, telling you which color corresponds to which region.

2. With a Measure (Continuous Data)

Dragging a measure like Profit or Discount to Color creates a color gradient. Marks with higher values will be a darker shade, while marks with lower values will be lighter (or a different color entirely).

Example: Create a map by double-clicking on the State field. Next, drag the Profit field onto the Color property. The states will be colored based on their total profit. You can click the "Color" shelf and select "Edit Colors" to change the palette. For profit, a diverging palette (like red-to-green) is great because it clearly shows negative and positive values.

Using the Size Shelf

The Size shelf adjusts the size of your marks based on a measure. It’s an effective way to emphasize magnitude.

Example: Let's build a scatter plot. Drag Profit to Columns and Sales to Rows. Set the mark type to "Circle." This gives you a single circle at the intersection of total sales and profit. To see more detail, drag Customer Name to the Detail shelf. Now you have a circle for every customer.

This is where Size becomes powerful. Drag the Shipping Cost field onto the Size shelf. The circles will resize — the larger the circle, the higher the shipping cost for that customer's orders. This allows you to encode a third measure (Shipping Cost) into your two-axis scatter plot, giving you more insight in the same amount of space.

Adding Context with the Label Shelf

Sometimes, you want to see the exact values for certain data points without having to hover over them. The Label shelf is a simple drag-and-drop solution.

Example: Start with a simple line chart showing Sales over a continuous Month of Order Date. Then, drag the Sales field from the data pane onto the Label property. The sales value will appear on each data point along the line.

Pro Tip: Labeling every single mark can quickly make your chart messy and unreadable. Click on the Label shelf and you'll see options to refine what gets labeled. For a line chart, you can choose to label only the "Line Ends" or just the "Min/Max" values, which is much cleaner.

Going Deeper with the Detail Shelf

The Detail shelf is one of the most important yet sometimes misunderstood properties. Its job is to add more marks to your view without affecting the other visual properties like color or size. It controls your visualization's level of aggregation.

Example: Create a simple bar chart of Sales by Category. You'll have three bars: Furniture, Office Supplies, and Technology.

Now, drag the Sub-Category field onto the Detail shelf. What happens? Each of the three original bars is now divided into smaller segments, one for each sub-category within that category. You haven't changed the color or the total length of the bars, but you've increased the level of detail. By hovering over each segment, you can see the tooltip for that specific sub-category.

If you dragged Sub-Category to Color instead, you would get a similar visual, but each sub-category would have its own color. Detail is for when you just want to add granularity without adding another color element.

Customizing Hover Info with the Tooltip Shelf

A tooltip is the information box that appears when you hover over a mark. By default, it shows any fields used in the view. You can customize it to be much more informative.

Example: In the scatter plot we built earlier (Sales vs. Profit), hover over any circle. The default tooltip will show the Customer Name, Profit, and Sales.

Let's add more context. Drag the Region field and the Discount field to the Tooltip property on the Marks Card. Now, when you hover, the tooltip will also show the region and discount amount for each customer. You can even click the Tooltip shelf to open an editor where you can format the text, write full sentences, and rearrange the fields to create a custom, easy-to-read pop-up.

Putting It All Together: A Multi-Layered Chart

Let's combine these concepts into one powerful visualization. We'll build a bubble chart that quickly tells us about product performance.

1. Drag Category and Sub-Category to the Columns shelf.
2. Set the Mark Type to "Circle."
3. Drag Sales onto the Size shelf. The circles will now represent the sales volume for each sub-category.
4. Drag Profit onto the Color shelf. This will color each circle on a gradient from low profit to high profit. Edit the colors to use a diverging red-to-green palette to make negative profit stand out.
5. Drag Profit Ratio onto the Label shelf to display the profitability directly on each circle. Format it as a percentage.
6. Drag Quantity to the Tooltip shelf to add that information on hover.

In just a few steps, you've created a rich visualization. You can now see at a glance:

• Which sub-categories have the highest sales (largest circles).
• Which sub-categories are most profitable (green circles) and which are losing money (red/orange circles).
• The exact profit ratio for each.

This is the power of using marks in Tableau — you can layer multiple dimensions and measures into a single, intuitive view.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the Marks Card is fundamental to moving from a beginner to a proficient Tableau user. It’s your control center for encoding data with color, size, text, and detail, transforming a simple chart into a rich source of insights. By experimenting with these properties, you'll be able to tell more compelling stories and answer deeper business questions with your data.

While Tableau offers incredible depth, we know that getting started and building these reports can feel complex and time-consuming. We built Graphed to remove that friction entirely. Instead of learning shelves, marks, and filters, you can connect your data sources like Google Analytics or Shopify and simply ask for what you need in plain English. Describe the chart or report you need — like "show me sales by category as a bar chart, colored by profit" — and our AI builds a live, interactive dashboard for you in seconds.