Shelves are the designated areas in Tableau’s workspace where you drag fields to build and structure your visualizations.
Practical Response 1:
“Shelves are the areas like Rows, Columns, and Filters where I place fields to construct my views—they’re essentially the building blocks of every Tableau chart.”
Practical Response 2:
“When I create visualizations, I use shelves to position my data. The Rows and Columns shelves determine the chart structure, while the Marks shelf controls how data points appear.”
Detailed Explanation:
Shelves form the structural foundation of Tableau’s visual analytics interface, with each serving a specific purpose:
Rows and Columns Shelves: Determine the primary structure of your visualization. Fields placed here create the axes and headers—Rows form the vertical axis, Columns form the horizontal axis.
Filters Shelf: Applies data restrictions to the entire worksheet, limiting which records appear in the visualization based on your criteria.
Marks Shelf: Controls the visual properties of data points, containing cards for Color, Size, Label, Detail, Tooltip, and Shape to customize how marks appear.
Pages Shelf: Creates animated visualizations and breakdowns by allowing you to step through dimension members one at a time.
The availability and behavior of shelves can change based on your mark type selection. For example, choosing “Shape” as your mark type reveals a Shape card on the Marks shelf, while “Line” marks enable the Path card for controlling line connection order.
Keywords:
Tableau workspace
Tableau shelves
Rows and Columns Tableau
Marks shelf Tableau
Filters shelf Tableau