How to Hide a Dashboard in Tableau

Building a multi-dashboard report in Tableau is a great way to tell a complete data story, but sometimes you don’t want your audience to see every single piece. Whether it’s a work-in-progress, a helper sheet, or just something to declutter the view, knowing how to properly hide a dashboard is an essential skill. This guide will walk you through the simple "right-click and hide" method as well as more advanced techniques for creating a clean, guided user experience.

Why Would You Hide a Dashboard in Tableau?

Before jumping into the “how,” it’s helpful to understand the “why.” Hiding dashboards isn’t about being secretive, it's about good report design and creating an intuitive journey for your end-user. Here are the most common reasons to hide a dashboard or worksheet:

• Work-in-Progress (WIP): You might have an experimental or unfinished dashboard that isn’t ready for prime time. Hiding it keeps your published workbook clean while allowing you to continue developing it behind the scenes.
• Utility and Helper Dashboards: Often, you need to create "helper" worksheets dedicated to specific tasks, such as housing all your filters, driving a complex action, or holding specific text/images for a cleaner layout. These aren’t meant to be viewed directly, so hiding them is standard practice.
• Creating a Guided Navigation Path: The best Tableau dashboards feel less like reports and more like applications. You can hide a series of "drill-down" dashboards and guide users to them with navigation buttons. This prevents them from feeling overwhelmed by dozens of tabs and ensures they follow the intended analytical path.
• Decluttering a Large Workbook: If your workbook has 15 or 20 different tabs, the user experience can become messy. Hiding less-critical, deep-dive views and revealing them only through navigation links on summary dashboards can massively improve usability.

The Quickest Method: Using "Hide Sheet"

The most straightforward way to hide a dashboard is to use Tableau’s built-in “Hide Sheet” functionality. Tableau treats dashboards and worksheets similarly in the bottom tab navigation, so the process is the same for both.

How to Hide a Dashboard or Worksheet

Follow these simple steps:

1. Open your workbook in Tableau Desktop.
2. Locate the tabs at the bottom of the window that represent your worksheets and dashboards.
3. Find the dashboard tab you want to hide.
4. Right-click on the tab.
5. From the context menu that appears, select Hide Sheet.

That’s it! The tab will instantly disappear from the tab view at the bottom. The dashboard still exists within the workbook file, and all its functionality remains, it's just no longer visible in the navigation bar.

How to Unhide a Dashboard

Of course, you'll eventually need to access that hidden sheet again. The process to unhide is just as easy.

1. Right-click on any visible worksheet or dashboard tab at the bottom of the screen.
2. Select Unhide All Sheets from the context menu.
3. A dialog box will pop up, listing all the currently hidden sheets in your workbook.
4. Select the name of the dashboard (or dashboards) you want to bring back. You can select multiple sheets by holding down Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac).
5. Click the OK button.

Your selected dashboard will reappear in the tab bar, ready for you to edit or view.

Creating a Cleaner Experience with Dashboard Actions

While the right-click-and-hide method is fast, its real power is unlocked when you combine it with Dashboard Actions. This technique allows you to create a controlled, app-like experience where users navigate your workbook without ever needing to see the tabs at the bottom.

The strategy is to design a main "Home" or "Overview" dashboard visible to the user and then hide all the supplemental "detail" dashboards. You then add interactive Navigation objects or buttons that take the user to the hidden dashboards when they click.

Example: Building a Guided Path for Sales Analysis

Imagine you have two dashboards:

• Sales Overview: A summary dashboard with top-level KPIs. This one will stay visible.
• Regional Performance Deep Dive: A detailed view with charts for a specific region. This is the one we want to hide.

Step 1: Hide the Detail Dashboard

First, hide your destination dashboard. Right-click the “Regional Performance Deep Dive” tab and select Hide Sheet.

Step 2: Create a Navigation Trigger on the Overview Dashboard

Now, go to your main "Sales Overview" dashboard. You need something for the user to click to trigger the navigation.

From the 'Objects' pane on the left, drag a Navigation object onto your dashboard. A dialog box will appear. You can configure this to look like a button.

• Navigate to: Set this to your hidden sheet, "Regional Performance Deep Dive."
• Button Style: You can choose to have it as a text button or an image button. For text, simply type "View Regional Details" into the Title box.
• Tooltip text: Add a helpful tooltip like "Click to see a detailed performance breakdown by region."

Click OK. You now have a clickable button on your overview dashboard.

Pro Tip: You don't have to use a predefined navigation button. You can make an actual chart act as a navigation trigger. For instance, clicking on a state in a map could take you to a hidden dashboard filtered for that state. You'd set this up via Dashboard Actions.

Step 3: Configure the Dashboard Action (If Not Using a Button)

If you prefer using a chart as a trigger instead of a button, you need to set up a manual action.

1. With your "Sales Overview" dashboard selected, go to the top menu and click Dashboard > Actions...
2. In the Actions dialog box, click Add Action > Go to Sheet...
3. Source Sheets: Ensure only your "Sales Overview" dashboard is checked. Also, select the specific chart on this dashboard that you want to be the clickable trigger (e.g., your Sales by Region map).
4. Run action on: Choose Select. This means the action will fire when a user clicks a mark on your source chart.
5. Target Sheet: From the dropdown, select your hidden dashboard, "Regional Performance Deep Dive."
6. Click OK to close both dialog boxes.

Step 4: Don't Forget a "Back" Button!

A crucial final step: once a user navigates to your hidden dashboard, they need a way back! On the "Regional Performance Deep Dive" dashboard, add another Navigation button. This time, configure it to navigate back to the "Sales Overview" dashboard.

Best Practices for Publishing Workbooks with Hidden Dashboards

When you're ready to share your workbook on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, hiding becomes even more powerful.

The Power of "Show Sheets as Tabs"

When you publish your workbook, the publish dialog box gives you a critical option: Show sheets as tabs.

If you've built your navigation using dashboard actions (as described above), you should uncheck this box. When you uncheck it, the end-user will not see any tabs along the bottom of the screen in their browser. They will only be able to navigate using the buttons and actions you have built. This solidifies the "app-like" experience and fully hides all dashboards, forcing users onto your designed path.

Distinguish Hiding from Security

It's important to remember that hiding a dashboard is a user experience (UX) technique, not a security feature. Anyone with permission to download the workbook or edit it on the server can easily unhide all the sheets. If you need to restrict access to certain data for certain users, you should use Tableau’s actual security features like User Filters or Row-Level Security.

Final Thoughts

Hiding dashboards in Tableau is a simple yet powerful technique for improving workbook organization and user experience. Whether you're quickly hiding an unfinished sheet or designing an intricate, guided analysis path with dashboard actions, it helps you move beyond basic reports and build truly interactive data tools for your audience.

While mastering these techniques in Tableau is a fantastic skill for creating custom reports, it often takes hours of setup with a considerable learning curve. Sometimes, you just need straight answers from your data without building a complex navigation system. We built Graphed to solve this by letting you create dashboards and get insights just by asking questions in plain English. No tabs to hide or actions to configure - just instant, real-time reports connected directly to dashboards, pulling data from your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce.