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Visualizing Dates

Updated May 19, 2024 ·

Overview​

Dates help analyze when events happened and identify trends over time. Tableau makes it easy to work with dates in visualizations.

  • Date Fields in Tableau

    • Dates are stored in the Dimensions area.

    • Identified by a calendar icon in the Data pane.

  • Built-in Date Hierarchy

    • Tableau allows drilling down from Year → Quarter → Month → Day.
    • Helps analyze trends at different levels.

Setting Up the Visualization​

In this example, we’ll use a dataset from the United Nations Statistics Division to visualize the trend of births in a country over the years.

Download the workbook here: 3_1_UN_stats_yearly_data.twbx

Let's start with creating the line chart to see the trends.

  1. Drag Date to Columns.

  2. Drag Births to Rows.

  3. Drag Country to Filters and select a country (e.g., Portugal).

  4. Tableau automatically groups data by Year.

Adjust the Granularity​

Using the previous dataset, we can modify it to adjust the granularity:

  1. Click the arrow next to YEAR(Date) and select Month.

  2. There are two sections here: discrete (blue) and continuous (green).

  3. If months appear without years, Tableau is treating them as a discrete dimension (blue).

  4. To show a timeline, select Month from the second section in the dropdown.

  5. This makes it a continuous measure (green), displaying each month in each year.