How to Add Multiple Sheets in Story Tableau

Creating a standalone dashboard is great, but telling a data-driven story often requires a guided, sequential narrative. Tableau's Story feature helps you do just that by combining multiple worksheets and dashboards into a single, interactive presentation. This article will walk you through exactly how to create a Tableau Story, add multiple sheets to it, and customize the narrative to present your insights effectively.

What Exactly is a Tableau Story?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "what" and "why." Think of a Tableau Story as a presentation tool built directly into your workbook. While a dashboard is designed for interactive exploration of various charts in one view, a story is designed to walk an audience through a sequence of insights.

Each step in your story is called a "story point," and each point can contain a single worksheet, an entire dashboard, or even just a block of text. This linear format allows you to control the narrative, build context step-by-step, and guide your audience to a specific conclusion without them getting lost in the data.

You might use a story to:

• Present quarterly sales performance, starting with a high-level overview and drilling down into regional, product, and individual performance.
• Explain the results of a marketing campaign by showing ad spend, followed by website traffic, lead conversions, and finally, revenue generated.
• Tell the story of customer behavior, showing demographic trends, then purchase patterns, followed by customer satisfaction scores.

The goal is to provide context and connection between different visualizations, turning raw data into a compelling argument or explanation.

How to Create a Story in Tableau

Getting started is simple. Look at the bottom of your Tableau workspace where you see tabs for your existing worksheets and dashboards. To the right of these, you'll find three icons:

• New Worksheet
• New Dashboard
• New Story

Click the New Story icon. This will create a new tab and open the Story workspace interface, which has a few key areas.

Understanding the Story Workspace

When you create a new story, you'll see a slightly different layout than the worksheet or dashboard view:

1. Story Pane (Left): On the left side, you'll see a list of all your existing worksheets and dashboards. This is where you'll drag your content from.
2. Canvas (Center): This is the large blank area where your selected worksheet or dashboard will be displayed. This is what your audience will see at each story point.
3. Navigator/Layout & Story Tools (Top): Above the main canvas, you'll see the navigator strip. This is where your story points will appear as you create them. You can add captions here and choose the style of navigation (e.g., arrows, dots). You can also manage the size of your story and show or hide the title.

Step-by-Step: Adding Multiple Sheets to Your Story

Now for the main event. Creating your story involves building it out, point by point, using the worksheets and dashboards you've already created. It's best to have your supporting visualizations built before you start building your story.

Step 1: Add Your First Worksheet or Dashboard

Your story starts empty. To add the first "slide" or point, find the worksheet or dashboard you want to start with in the Story pane on the left.

• Drag and drop it onto the large canvas area that says "Drag a sheet here."

That's it! This officially creates your first story point. You'll see a new thumbnail appear in the navigator bar at the top of the canvas. By default, it will be titled with the name of the sheet you just added.

Step 2: Add Your Second Sheet (Creating a New Story Point)

Here’s the key to adding multiple sheets. You don't add them to the same story point, you create a new story point for each new visualization.

To add your second sheet, go back to the Story pane on the left and find the next worksheet or dashboard in your narrative. For example, if your first point was a "Sales Overview" map, your second might be a "Sales by Product Category" bar chart.

• Again, drag and drop this second sheet onto the canvas.

Notice what happens: Tableau doesn't replace the first sheet. Instead, it creates a new story point next to the first one in the navigator bar at the top.

You now have two distinct points in your story. You can click between them using the navigation arrows or the thumbnails to switch between your two sheets.

Step 3: Keep Adding Sheets to Build Your Narrative

Continue this process for every visualization you want to include in your presentation.

• Find the third worksheet ('Sales by Rep,' for example).
• Drag it onto the canvas. This creates the third story point.
• Find a complete 'Monthly Sales Dashboard'.
• Drag it onto the canvas. This creates the fourth story point.

Each time you drag a new sheet, you're adding another step in your guided sequence. You're not limited to just worksheets, you can seamlessly mix and match individual charts with full, interactive dashboards throughout your story.

Customizing and Refining Your Story

Simply adding sheets is just the beginning. The real power of a Story comes from the narrative you build around the visuals. Tableau gives you several tools to customize the flow and add context.

Editing Captions and Adding Descriptions

By default, each story point is named after its worksheet. This is often not very descriptive for an audience. You should write a clear, concise caption for each point.

• To edit the caption: Click on the text in the navigator thumbnail for the story point you want to change, and type in a new title. For example, change "Sheet 3" to "Top 5 Performing Reps This Quarter."
• To add a description bullet point: In the Story pane on the left, you can drag the Description object onto your canvas. This creates a text area directly on top of your visualization where you can add annotations, bullet points, or questions to guide your audience.

Choosing a Navigator Style

You can change how users navigate between your story points. Above the story navigator, you'll see a "Layout" tab. You can choose different styles:

• Captions: The default view with thumbnails and titles. Best for complex stories.
• Numbers: A simple numbered sequence. Good for step-by-step processes.
• Dots: A minimal, modern dot navigator, similar to what you’d see on a website image carousel.
• Arrows Only: Hides the navigator strip completely, allowing users to only move forward and backward. Best for a very controlled, linear presentation.

Managing Size and Interactivity

Just like with dashboards, you can control the overall size of your Story canvas using the "Size" setting in the left pane. You can choose a fixed size (like for a specific screen resolution) or a range for better responsive viewing.

A crucial thing to remember is that your worksheets and dashboards remain interactive within a story. If you have filters or highlight actions set up on a dashboard, they will still work when presented inside a story point. This is incredibly powerful - you can use one story point to present an overview, then use a filter to answer a specific question live during your presentation without ever leaving the story view.

Putting It All Together: A Quick Example

1. Create a New Story.
2. Drag your "US Sales Map" worksheet onto the canvas. Edit the caption to read: "1. Overall Sales by State in Q3".
3. Drag your "Product Category Performance" worksheet onto the canvas. Edit the caption to read: "2. Technology Category Leads the Way".
4. Drag your "Regional Drilldown" dashboard onto the canvas. Edit the caption to read: "3. West Coast Showing Exceptional Growth". Add a description box with the text: "Notice the 40% year-over-year growth in California".
5. Change the navigator style to "Numbers."
6. Enter Presentation Mode to click through your now-guided analysis.

Final Thoughts

Adding multiple sheets to a Tableau Story is a straightforward process of creating a new story point for each visualization you want to present in sequence. By ordering these sheets thoughtfully and adding descriptive captions, you can transform a collection of charts into a powerful, data-driven narrative that guides your audience to clear, actionable insights.

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