How to Do Entire View in Tableau

Nothing disrupts a clean Tableau dashboard more than an awkward scrollbar or excessive white space around a chart. If your visualization isn't perfectly filling its container, there's a simple fix. We'll walk you through how to use the 'Entire View' feature in Tableau to make your visuals fit perfectly, creating more dynamic and professional-looking dashboards.

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What Exactly is 'Entire View' in Tableau?

In Tableau, the 'Fit' control menu determines how a visualization scales within its designated window, or "pane." 'Entire View' is one of several options in this menu, and its job is to automatically resize your graph, map, or chart both vertically and horizontally to fill 100% of the available space. Think of it like setting a background image on your computer to "stretch" or "fill" - it expands to fit the entire screen.

To really understand what 'Entire View' does, it helps to understand the other fitting options:

• Normal: This is Tableau's default setting. The visualization appears at its natural, optimal size based on the data and chart type. If the visualization is larger than the pane, scrollbars will appear. If it's smaller, you'll see empty white space.
• Fit Width: This option scales the visualization horizontally to fill the entire width of the pane. If the content is taller than the pane, a vertical scrollbar will appear. This is especially useful for long tables or bar charts with many categories.
• Fit Height: The opposite of 'Fit Width,' this option scales the visualization vertically to fill the pane's height. If the content is wider than the pane, a horizontal scrollbar will be added. This works well for tall, narrow charts like a timeline or a vertical bar chart.

While 'Fit Width' and 'Fit Height' only adjust along one axis, 'Entire View' adjusts along both. It forces the visualization into the exact dimensions of its container, eliminating scrollbars and empty margins entirely.

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How to Apply 'Entire View': A Step-by-Step Guide

Applying 'Entire View' is one of the quickest adjustments you can make in Tableau. The control is located in the main toolbar at the top of your worksheet.

Step 1: Open Your Workbook and Select a Worksheet

Start by opening the Tableau workbook that contains the visualization you want to adjust. Click on the tab for the specific worksheet (or 'sheet') you're working on.

Step 2: Locate the 'Fit' Control Dropdown

Look at the toolbar above your visualization pane. You'll see a series of dropdown menus and icons. The 'Fit' control is usually located between the 'Mark Size' and 'Dashboard Actions' buttons. By default, it will say "Normal."

Step 3: Select 'Entire View'

Click on the dropdown menu that says "Normal." A list of the four fitting options will appear. Simply select 'Entire View' from the list.

That’s it! As soon as you click it, you’ll see the change.

Step 4: Observe the Resized Visualization

Your chart will immediately expand or shrink to fill every corner of its container. A small bar chart that previously sat in the middle of a sea of white space will now have tall, wide bars filling the pane. A map that was too large will shrink down to fit without needing scrollbars.

Using 'Entire View' on a Dashboard

What if you've already added your worksheet to a dashboard? The process is slightly different but just as easy. You don't need to go back to the original worksheet.

1. Click on the specific chart you want to adjust within your dashboard. A gray border will appear around it, indicating it's selected.
2. In the top right corner of that selected sheet, click the small downward-facing arrow icon (the 'More Options' menu).
3. Hover over the 'Fit' option in the new menu that appears.
4. Select 'Entire View' from the sub-menu.

This method gives you granular control, allowing you to have one viz on your dashboard set to 'Entire View' while another right next to it is set to 'Fit Width.'

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When Should You Use 'Entire View'? (And When to Avoid It)

'Entire View' is incredibly useful, but it's not a magical fix for every situation. Forcing a visualization to fit a new shape can sometimes distort the data or make it harder to read. The key is knowing when it’s the right tool for the job.

Excellent Use Cases for 'Entire View'

• KPI Cards: Do you have a single large number, like "Total Sales" or "Website Users," on your dashboard? Setting BAN and KPI cards to 'Entire View' makes them pop and use the space much more effectively.
• Maps: Unless you need to zoom in on a very specific region, maps generally look best when they fill their entire container. 'Entire View' ensures you see the full geographical scope at a glance.
• Donut and Pie Charts: Since these charts lack traditional X and Y axes, they're not easily distorted. Scaling them to fill the space usually improves their visual impact without compromising the data.
• Charts with Low Data Density: If you have a bar chart with just two or three categories, the 'Normal' view can look sparse and empty. 'Entire View' will make the bars larger and more prominent, creating a fuller, more balanced look.

When to Be Cautious with 'Entire View'

• Data-Dense Tables or Crosstabs: If you have a table with dozens of rows or columns, setting it to 'Entire View' is a fast track to illegible, cramped text. Everything will be squished to fit, and your users will have to squint to read it. For large tables, 'Fit Width' with a vertical scrollbar is a much friendlier choice.
• Dense Scatter Plots: Forcing a scatter plot with hundreds of data points into a specific frame can cause marks to overlap, cluttering your data into a tangled mass. This makes it impossible to see individual points or spot an accurate trendline.
• Bar Charts with Many Categories: A horizontal bar chart with 50 different categories will look clean with 'Fit Width,' allowing the user to scroll vertically. If you apply 'Entire View,' Tableau will make each bar incredibly thin to squeeze them all in, rendering them practically useless for comparison.
• Long Line Charts: Aspect ratio matters a lot for line charts showing trends over time. Using 'Entire View' on a container that is very wide but not very tall can flatten a sharp drop into a gentle decline. Be mindful that it can distort the visual representation of change.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Sometimes, applying 'Entire View' causes a couple of predictable problems. Here's what to do when they pop up.

Problem: My text, numbers, or labels are overlapping.

Solution: When your visualization resizes, the labels don't always resize gracefully. The easiest fix is to reconsider if 'Entire View' is the right choice for that specific viz. If it is, you can go into the 'Label' settings on the Marks card to A) reduce the font size, B) change the text orientation, or C) select the option to "Allow labels to overlap other marks."

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Problem: The shapes in my visual look distorted.

Solution: This often happens with maps or custom shapes. For instance, using 'Entire View' on a world map in a very tall, narrow container will make the continents look weirdly stretched and skinny. The best solution here is to resize the container on your dashboard to have a more standard aspect ratio. You can't fight the container's dimensions - the viz has to conform to them. If the layout is rigid, you might have to revert to the 'Normal' fit to preserve the correct proportions.

Final Thoughts

Using 'Entire View' is a fundamental skill for anyone looking to build clean, professional dashboards in Tableau. It gives you precise control over how your visualizations scale, helping you eliminate awkward spacing and dreaded scrollbars. By learning when to use it - and just as importantly, when not to - you can take your dashboards from functional to fantastic.

Of course, mastering layout controls and spending time on formatting is just one part of the reporting battle. For many teams, the setup time to even get to the dashboard-building stage consumes most of their week. At Graphed , we created a way to skip that manual work entirely. Instead of tweaking fit settings and dragging charts onto a canvas, you can connect your data sources and simply ask our AI analyst in plain English, "Show me a dashboard of website traffic by country," and it builds it for you in seconds with the data already cleaned, synced, and visualized.