How to Remove Grand Total in Tableau

Removing the grand total row or column in Tableau should be a simple click, but sometimes it stubbornly stays put, greyed out and uncooperative. You’re not alone in that frustration - it’s a common hurdle for even experienced users. This guide breaks down the straightforward methods for removing grand totals and explains the powerful workarounds you can use when the standard options fail.

Understanding Why Tableau Adds Grand Totals

Tableau automatically adds grand totals to certain visualizations, most commonly text tables (also known as crosstabs), as a default feature. The goal is to provide a quick, high-level summary of your data so you can see the big picture at a glance. For instance, if you build a view showing sales broken down by Region and Product Category, Tableau will add:

Subtotals: The total sales for each region.
Grand Totals: The total sales across all regions and categories.

While useful for an initial C-suite-level view, these totals often become clutter when your goal is to analyze the individual components or present a clean, minimalist table. When you just want to focus on a direct comparison between categories, the grand total can be a visual distraction. Knowing how to efficiently remove it is fundamental to taking control of your report's design.

The Standard Methods for Removing Grand Totals

In most everyday situations, you only need to use one of the two methods below. Start here before attempting more advanced workarounds.

Method 1: The Analysis Menu

This is the most direct and common way to control totals. The Analysis menu at the top of your Tableau workbook is the primary command center for adjusting summaries like totals, percentages, and forecasts.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

On the top Tableau toolbar, click on the Analysis menu.
Hover your cursor over Totals. A fly-out menu will appear with several options.
From this menu, you can uncheck the relevant selections:
- To remove the total column at the far right, uncheck Show Column Grand Totals.
- To remove the total row at the very bottom, uncheck Show Row Grand Totals.

Just click to toggle them off, and they should disappear from your visualization. For over 80% of text tables, this is all you will ever need to do. If these options are selectable, you’re done!

Method 2: Using the Analytics Pane

The Analytics Pane offers a more visual, drag-and-drop way to manage analytical objects like reference lines, trend lines, and totals. It’s particularly useful if you prefer interacting directly with the canvas instead of navigating through menus.

On the right side of the workbook view, click on the Analytics tab to switch from the Data pane.
Under the "Summarize" section, you’ll find an item named Totals.
To remove totals that are already present, you can simply right-click directly on the Grand Total header in your table and select Remove. This action is the equivalent of unchecking it from the Analysis menu.

While the Analytics Pane is excellent for adding different types of totals (e.g., you can drag it to your view and choose "Column Grand Totals" or "Subtotals"), removing them often leads you back to using the same right-click menu or the main Analysis Menu. Consider this a slightly different path to the same destination.

Troubleshooting: Why Can't I Remove My Grand Total?

The real challenge arises when the options in the Analysis menu are greyed out, or a total refuses to disappear. This usually happens in more complex visualizations where Tableau's default logic for totals runs into ambiguity. Here are the most common scenarios and their solutions.

Scenario 1: You Have Stacked Marks

Stacked marks occur when you have multiple dimensions contributing to the marks in your view, such as having a dimension on the Color, Size, or Details shelf in the Marks card. For example, if you build a sales table broken down by Region (Rows) and Segment (Columns), and you also drag Product Category to the Color shelf, you've created stacked marks. Each cell is now a stack of colored bars representing a category.

The problem: With stacked marks, Tableau’s Automatic totaling mode sometimes gets confused and disables the on/off toggle for grand totals.

The Fix: Force Tableau to use a specific aggregation for its totals.

Navigate to the top toolbar and click Analysis > Totals.
At the bottom of the Totals menu, find the option Total All Using.
Change this selection from Automatic to a specific aggregation, usually Sum.

By explicitly telling Tableau how you want it to calculate the total (e.g., by summing up the components), you resolve the ambiguity. In nearly all cases, doing this will reactivate the Show Row/Column Grand Totals toggles, allowing you to uncheck them successfully.

Scenario 2: Working with Two-Pass Totals and Complex Aggregations

Certain types of aggregations operate differently at the grand total level than they do for individual rows. This includes a distinct count COUNTD(), medians, percentiles, and most table calculations (like percent of total). Tableau calls these "Two-Pass Totals," because it first calculates the values for the detailed rows and then performs a separate, second calculation for the grand total row.

For example, if you have a COUNTD(Customers) calculation, the grand total cannot be found by simply summing up the distinct customer counts from each region. A customer who purchased in both the East and West regions would be counted once in each region but only once in the grand total. This difference can make the total row misleading, and sometimes you just want it gone.

The problem: You may not be able to simply turn off the totals, or you wish to hide the total for one measure while keeping it for another in the same table.

The Fix: Create a calculated field to act as a filter that hides the total row.

Create a new calculated field by right-clicking in the Data panel and selecting Create Calculated Field.
Name it something clear, like Hide Grand Total.
Enter the following formula:

Click OK.

The SIZE() function is a table calculation that returns the number of rows or columns in a partition. For the detailed rows in your table, this number will be greater than one. For the grand total row, the partition size is exactly one, so SIZE() returns 1. This calculation therefore returns True for all your data rows and False for the grand total row.

Now, apply it as a filter:

Drag your newly created Hide Grand Total calculated field onto the Filters shelf.
In the filter dialog box that appears, check the box for True and click OK.

The grand total row will instantly disappear from the view, as it’s being filtered out. You may need to adjust the Table Calculation setting for the filter (e.g., compute using Table Down or Across) depending on your table's layout.

Creative Workarounds for Ultimate Control

If the above methods don’t work or you need more formatting flexibility, you can turn to dashboard-level solutions.

Solution 1: Use Two Separate Worksheets on a Dashboard

This is the ultimate workaround for full control over every part of your table, including totals. The idea is to build your main table without totals on one sheet, then create a second sheet that only contains the totals, and finally combine them on a dashboard.

This approach gives you complete control to format the totals separately from the main data — change their font size, background color, or even use a different calculation entirely.

Create your main data sheet. Build your desired table and use one of the methods above to remove its grand totals.
Duplicate the sheet. Right-click the worksheet tab and choose Duplicate.
Create the totals sheet. On the duplicated sheet, remove the dimensions that create the detailed breakdown. For example, if you have Region on the Rows shelf, remove it. This will collapse the view to show only the grand total values.
Build your dashboard. On a new dashboard, use a vertical or horizontal layout container. Drag your main sheet into the container, followed by your totals sheet. By lining them up in a container, you can make them look like a single, seamless table.

Solution 2: Format the Total to be Invisible

What if you can't remove the total with a formula, but you need it gone visually? This clever trick involves using a calculated field to conditionally format the grand total text to match your background color, making it disappear in plain sight.

Let's use the SIZE() function again, but this time for color:

Create a new calculated field and name it something like Total Hider Color.
Enter the following calculation:

Drag the measure you want to display (e.g., SUM(Sales)) to the Text button on the Marks card.
Drag your new Total Hider Color calculated field onto the Color button on the Marks card.
Click the Color button to edit the colors. Assign your text color (e.g., "Black") to the value "Show" and assign your background color (e.g., "White") to the value "Hide".

Now, all the text in your detailed rows will appear normally, but the text in the grand total row will blend into the background and become invisible. This is a powerful technique for surgical removal of specific totals in a complex dashboard without altering the data structure.

Final Thoughts

Mastering grand totals in Tableau means knowing where to look in the Analysis menu for quick edits and being prepared to use calculated fields like SIZE() > 1 when faced with more complex views. While totals are meant to be helpful summaries, your ability to precisely control them is essential for creating clean, purposeful, and professional reports that communicate insights effectively.

We know that navigating menu options, figuring out stacked marks, and writing table calculations can sometimes become a time-consuming distraction from the core analysis. At Graphed, we designed a platform that eliminates these technical hurdles. You can use simple, conversational language to build reports without wrestling with hidden menus. Instead of troubleshooting a stubborn grand total, you can just ask, "Create a table of website sessions by source and country for last month, with no totals," and get exactly what you need in seconds.