How to Edit Header in Tableau

Cleaning up your headers is one of the quickest ways to make a Tableau dashboard look polished and professional. A well-formatted header can make the difference between a confusing chart and a clear, compelling visualization. This article provides a comprehensive guide to editing headers in Tableau, from simple renaming and formatting to more advanced techniques like aliasing and creating custom headers.

What Are Headers in Tableau?

In Tableau, headers are the labels for the rows and columns in your visualization. They are automatically generated from the names of the fields (dimensions and measures) you place on the Rows and Columns shelves. For example, if you drag the "Region" dimension to the Rows shelf and the "Sales" measure to the Columns shelf, "Region" will appear as a row header and "Sales" will appear as the axis title, which functions as a column header.

Effectively editing these headers is essential for several reasons:

• Clarity: Raw field names from a database (e.g., cust_region_nam or SUM(Sales)) can be confusing. Renaming them to something human-readable like "Customer Region" or "Total Sales" instantly makes your chart easier to understand.
• Presentation: Proper alignment, font, and color can guide the user's eye and improve the overall aesthetic of your dashboard, making it look more credible and professional.
• Space Management: Techniques like rotating or abbreviating headers can help you fit more information into a limited space without sacrificing readability.

Basic Header Editing: Renaming and Formatting

Let's start with the most common and straightforward header edits: changing the title and adjusting its appearance.

How to Rename a Header

Tableau gives you a few different ways to rename a header, depending on what you're trying to change. The easiest method is to edit it directly in the worksheet.

Method 1: Editing in the View (For Axis Headers)

This method works best for continuous fields (green pills), which create an axis.

1. Drag a measure like "Sales" to the Columns shelf and a dimension like "Category" to the Rows shelf. You'll see an axis at the bottom with the header "Sales."
2. Double-click directly on the axis header ("Sales"). An "Edit Axis" dialog box will appear.
3. In the "General" tab, find the "Title" text box.
4. Change the text from "Sales" to something more descriptive, like "Total Revenue for 2024."
5. Click "OK" to apply the changes.

Method 2: Editing the Field Label in the Shelf

This works for both discrete (blue pills) and continuous (green pills) fields.

1. Place your desired fields on the Rows or Columns shelves.
2. Double-click directly on the pill's name in the shelf itself. For example, if you have "SUM(Profit)" on the columns shelf, double-click on the "SUM(Profit)" text.
3. The text will become editable. Type your new name, such as "Overall Profit," and press Enter.
4. This updates the header without changing the name of the original field in your Data pane.

How to Format a Header

Formatting controls the visual appearance of your header text, including font, color, size, and background. This helps you align your dashboard with brand guidelines or simply improve its readability.

Follow these steps to access the formatting options:

1. In your worksheet view, right-click the header you want to change. This can be a row header (like "Technology") or a column header (like an axis title).
2. From the context menu, select Format....
3. The Format pane will appear on the left side of your screen. Ensure you are on the "Header" tab (for discrete fields/dimensions) or the "Axis" tab (for continuous fields/measures).

Within the Format pane, you'll find these options:

• Font: Choose the font family, size, and style (bold, italic, underline). You can also change the font color here to match your brand or highlight specific elements.
• Alignment: Control the horizontal (left, center, right) and vertical (top, middle, bottom) alignment of your header text. You can also change the text direction to be horizontal, vertical (reading up), or vertical (reading down). Rotating headers is often useful for long labels on the x-axis.
• Shading: Apply a background color to your headers. This is a great way to group related columns or make section headers stand out.
• Borders: Add or customize the lines around your header cells to define boundaries more clearly. You can control the style, width, and color of the cell borders.

Using Aliases to Rename Header Values

Sometimes, it's not the field title you want to change, but the individual values within it. For instance, your data might contain state abbreviations like "AZ" and "CA," but for clarity, you want to display the full names "Arizona" and "California." This is where aliases come in.

An alias is a display name for a dimension member that doesn’t alter the underlying data. It's a simple find-and-replace for presentation purposes.

How to Create an Alias

There are two quick ways to set this up.

Method 1: Editing Directly from the View

1. Create a view that displays the dimension members you want to change. For example, you might have "State" on the Rows shelf.
2. Right-click on a specific header value you wish to change (e.g., right-click "CA").
3. Select Edit Alias... from the menu.
4. A small dialog box will pop up. Enter the new display name ("California") in the "Value (Alias)" field.
5. Click "OK." The view will update instantly, displaying "California" instead of "CA."

This is the fastest method when you only need to change a few values you can see on the screen.

Method 2: Editing from the Data Pane

1. In the Data pane on the left, find the dimension containing the values you want to alias (e.g., "State").
2. Right-click on the dimension name.
3. Navigate to Aliases....
4. An "Edit Aliases" dialog box will open, showing a complete list of all members within that dimension and their current aliases.
5. Click on any name in the "Value (Alias)" column and type your desired new name. This method is perfect for changing many values at once without having to find them in the visualization.
6. Click "OK" when you are finished.

Advanced Header Techniques

Once you've mastered the basics, you can use more advanced techniques to give you complete control over your dashboard's headers.

Creating Drill-Down Hierarchies

Instead of manually placing related fields next to each other, you can group them into a hierarchy. This creates interactive headers with "+" and "-" icons, allowing users to drill down and up to see different levels of detail.

1. In the Data Pane, find a dimension you want to be at the top level (e.g., "Category").
2. Find the child dimension (e.g., "Sub-Category") and drag it directly on top of the parent dimension ("Category").
3. A dialog box will appear asking you to name the hierarchy. Give it a descriptive name like "Product Details" and click "OK".
4. Now, when you drag the "Category" field onto the Rows shelf, it will include the "+" sign, allowing users to expand it to see "Sub-Category" data.

Hiding Headers

Sometimes, the cleanest visualization is one with no headers at all. You might do this if the information is redundant or if you are creating a visual element where labels are not needed. You can easily hide a header by right-clicking the pill on the Columns or Rows shelf and unchecking the Show Header option. The header disappears, but the data structure remains.

Creating Custom Headers with Calculated Fields

What if you want to combine multiple pieces of information into a single header? For example, showing both the product ID and the product name. You can achieve this using a calculated field.

Let's say you have a [ProductID] field and a [ProductName] field. To combine them, follow these steps:

1. Right-click anywhere in the Data pane and select Create Calculated Field.
2. Name your new field something like "Product Header".
3. Enter the following formula to concatenate the two fields:

[ProductID] + " - " + [ProductName]

1. Click "OK". A new dimension named "Product Header" will appear in your Data pane.
2. Drag this new calculated field onto the Rows or Columns shelf. Your headers will now display values like "P123 - Office Chair" in a single column.

Final Thoughts

Mastering header editing is a fundamental Tableau skill that elevates your work from a simple data dump to a polished, professional report. By learning to rename, format, alias, and customize your headers, you gain precise control over your dashboard's narrative, ensuring your audience can quickly and easily understand the insights you're presenting.

Dealing with the small but time-consuming details of formatting headers, labels, and axes in BI tools is often a tedious part of the reporting process. One of the reasons we built Graphed was to eliminate this kind of manual work entirely. Instead of clicking through format menus, you can just tell our AI what you want to see - "Show me a bar chart of sales by region, with the Western region highlighted in blue" - and we generate the correctly formatted visualization for you, instantly. This approach helps you skip the busy work and stay focused on the insights, not the formatting.