How to Make a Bar an Image in Tableau

Your Tableau bar chart looks perfect, but it's stuck inside the dashboard. To get it into your slide deck, report, or a team Slack channel, you need to turn it into an image. This article is your guide to doing just that. We'll walk through the straightforward methods for exporting your bar charts as high-quality images like PNGs or JPEGs, plus a few pro tips to make sure they look crisp and professional every time.

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Why Export Your Bar Chart as an Image?

While interactive dashboards are Tableau's superpower, sometimes you need a simple, static image. This isn't a step backward, it's about using the right format for the job. You might create an image of your bar chart for several common reasons:

• Presentations: Embedding charts into PowerPoint or Google Slides presentations is a primary use case. A well-placed bar chart can drive home a key finding during a meeting far more effectively than a wall of text.
• Reports and Documents: For monthly reports, memos, or analysis documents created in Word or Google Docs, static images are essential. They provide visual evidence for your conclusions without requiring the reader to have access to Tableau.
• Email and Messaging: Need to quickly share a specific insight with a colleague? A copied-and-pasted chart image in an email or a tool like Slack is much faster than sending a link and explaining where to look.
• Sharing with Non-Tableau Users: Not everyone on your team or in your client's organization will have a Tableau license. Exporting to a universal format like PNG allows anyone to see your data visualization, regardless of the tools they use.
• Website Content and Blogs: If you're creating a blog post or website article based on your data analysis, embedding images of your charts is the standard way to share your findings with a wider audience.

In short, converting your chart to an image makes your data portable, allowing you to tell a compelling story across any platform or document.

How to Export a Bar Chart as an Image in Tableau

Tableau offers a few different ways to create an image file from your bar chart. We’ll go from the most common and direct method to options that give you more control over the final output.

Method 1: Use the 'Export Image' Function (Most Direct)

This is the go-to method for saving your bar chart directly as a PNG, JPEG, or other common image file. It's best for when you need a standalone image file saved to your computer.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Navigate to the specific worksheet that contains the bar chart you want to export. Don't be on a dashboard view - click into the actual worksheet tab at the bottom of the screen.
2. In the top menu bar, click on Worksheet > Export > Image...
3. This will open the "Export Image" dialog box, where you have a few important choices to make.

Understanding the Image Options

In the Export Image dialog box, you'll see several settings you can configure:

• View: This option determines what part of the worksheet gets included in the image. You can choose to include the View (just the chart itself), Title, Caption, or Legends by ticking the appropriate boxes. For a clean look, you might just export the view. If the legend is critical for understanding the chart, make sure that box is checked.
• Layout: This section typically asks if you want your legend arranged on the right or below the chart. The default setting is usually fine, but you can adjust it for a better fit depending on your chart's orientation.
• Filename and File Type: At the bottom, after you click "Save," you can give your image a name and choose the file format from the dropdown menu (e.g., .png, .jpeg, .bmp).

Which Image Format Should You Choose?

• PNG (Portable Network Graphics): This is usually the best choice. PNG files use lossless compression, meaning they retain high quality and crisp lines, which is perfect for bar charts with text labels. They also support transparent backgrounds, which is a lifesaver if you need to place your chart over a colored background in a presentation.
• JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group): JPEGs are great for photos but can sometimes create fuzzy or pixelated artifacts around text and sharp lines in a chart due to their "lossy" compression. The main benefit is a smaller file size, which might be useful for web or email.
• BMP (Bitmap): This is an older, uncompressed format. The files are larger and offer no real advantages over PNG for charts. You can generally ignore this option.

Once you've made your selections, click Save, choose your location, and your bar chart is now a standalone image file.

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Method 2: Use the 'Copy Image' Function (Quickest for Pasting)

If you don't need to save a separate file but want to quickly drop your bar chart into an email, a Word document, or a Google Slide, the copy function is your best friend.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Just like before, go to the worksheet containing your bar chart.
2. In the top menu, navigate to Worksheet > Copy > Image...
3. The "Copy Image" dialog box will appear. It's nearly identical to the "Export Image" box. You'll have the same options to include the title, caption, view, and legend.
4. Select what you want to include, and click Copy.
5. Your chart is now copied to your clipboard. Navigate to your other application (like Outlook, PowerPoint, or Slack) and simply paste it using Ctrl + V (or Cmd + V on Mac).

This method saves you the step of saving a file and then inserting it. It’s perfect for workflows where you're quickly communicating an insight rather than building a formal, archived report.

Method 3: Export the Full Dashboard to PDF or PowerPoint

Sometimes you don't just need one chart, but an entire dashboard view exported as a single, static asset. This method preserves the entire layout, including all charts, text boxes, and filters exactly as they appear on your screen. This is ideal for creating handouts or pages in a formal report.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Make sure you are viewing the dashboard tab (not an individual worksheet).
2. Navigate to the top menu and select File > Export as PowerPoint... or File > Print to PDF...

For PowerPoint:

The "Export as PowerPoint" dialog box will pop up. It will generate a new .pptx file where each visible sheet and dashboard in your workbook becomes a static image on its own slide. It even includes a title slide that links back to your workbook on Tableau Server if it's published. This is incredibly useful for instantly building the foundation of a data-driven presentation.

For PDF:

The "Print to PDF" dialog box gives you more page-level control. Here, you can specify:

• Entire Workbook vs. Active Sheet: Choose whether to export everything or just the dashboard you're currently viewing. For a single dashboard, select "Active Sheet."
• Paper Size and Orientation: You can select standard paper sizes (like Letter or A4) and choose between Portrait and Landscape layouts. This is crucial for making sure your dashboard isn't awkwardly cut off when printed or viewed.

After clicking OK or Save, Tableau will generate the file. While this method doesn't produce a standalone PNG or JPEG of just your bar chart, it's the professional standard for creating high-fidelity, static reports of your entire dashboard view.

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Pro Tips for Professional-Looking Chart Images

Simply knowing how to export is only half the battle. Here are a few tips to ensure your exported images are clear, legible, and professional.

1. Get Your Sizing Right Before Exporting

Have you ever exported a chart only to find the text is blurry or unreadably small? This is almost always a sizing issue. Before you export, go to your Dashboard pane and under "Size," change the setting from "Automatic" to a fixed size (e.g., 1200px by 800px). By setting a fixed canvas size, you control exactly how Tableau renders the chart, leading to a much crisper and more predictable final image. This is the single most important tip for getting high-quality exports.

2. Clean Up Your Worksheet for a Minimal Look

The final image will include everything that's visible on your worksheet. Before you export, right-click and hide unnecessary elements like filter cards, unused legends, or worksheet titles if they are redundant. A clean, focused chart is easier for your audience to interpret. You can also press F7 to enter Presentation Mode for a quick preview of how the chart will look without the extra Tableau interface.

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3. Use Formatting to Improve Readability

Remember, the exported image is static. Your audience can't hover over a bar to see a tooltip with the exact value. Therefore, make sure all essential information is visible.

• Add Labels: Turn on mark labels (drag your measure to the "Label" shelf) so values are clearly displayed.
• Fonts and Colors: Make sure fonts are large and legible enough to be read when embedded in a smaller format. Use colors that have strong contrast and align with your company's branding.

4. Test Your Legend Placement

In the Export Image options, you can choose where the legend appears (e.g., to the right or below). Before finalizing, think about where you will place this image. If you're dropping it into a narrow column in a Word document, a legend below the chart might work better than one to the side. A quick "Copy Image" test can help you visualize the final layout.

Final Thoughts

Getting your bar chart out of Tableau and into a portable image format is a vital skill for anyone who needs to share their data insights. Whether you use the direct "Export Image" feature for PNG files or the quick "Copy Image" function for pasting into emails, mastering these options allows you to seamlessly integrate your data visualizations into any report, presentation, or conversation.

While exporting images from powerful tools like Tableau is a key part of the reporting workflow, we know that building and configuring these visualizations in the first place is often the most time-consuming step. At Graphed, we help you skip the manual busywork. By connecting your marketing and sales data sources just once, you can ask Graphed to build full dashboards and reports using simple, natural language. Instead of spending hours clicking and dragging, you can simply ask, "create a bar chart of sales by product category for this quarter," and get an instant, real-time visualization, allowing you to focus on the insights, not the setup.