Disabling Highlight Action in Tableau
When working with a chart in Tableau, selecting a data point (such as bars, lines, or points) highlights the chosen element while dimming the rest of the chart. This highlighting feature can be beneficial when you want to emphasize a specific data point. However, there are instances where such highlighting may not be desirable in the chart’s visuals. In such cases, the highlight action can be removed by incorporating a dummy field into the visualization.
For example, consider the map chart below, which displays airport locations worldwide. Selecting an airport shows a circular area defined by a parameter (in this case, a radius of 1,800 km) and highlights airports within this area in a different color (orange). However, upon selecting an airport, the chosen airport is highlighted, and the remaining airports are dimmed, as demonstrated in the screenshot below.
If the same airport is clicked again, the highlight action is removed, restoring the visualization to its intended state, with airports within the defined area displayed in orange and the others in grey. To streamline this process, the double-click requirement can be replaced with a single-click solution by eliminating the highlight action using a dummy data point.
Deactivate the highlight action in Tableau
To deactivate the highlight action in Tableau, follow these steps:
- Create a Dummy Field: Begin by creating a dummy field using the “Create Calculated Field…” option, as shown below.
- Move the Dummy Field: Drag the newly created calculated field from the Measures pane into the Dimensions pane.
- Add the Dummy Dimension: Place this dummy dimension into the Detail mark for each layer in your visualization (if there are multiple layers).
- Select the Dummy Field in the Highlight Menu: Navigate to the highlight menu at the top of Tableau (represented by a pen-shaped icon) and select the dummy field.
- Remove Tooltips for the Dummy Field: As the dummy field is often included in the tooltip by default, remove it to clean up the visualization.
By completing these steps, you can eliminate the highlight action, ensuring the chart does not dim unselected data points.
While there are various ways to disable the highlight feature, this approach is straightforward and easy to implement.
Author: Don Kang
Experienced Engineer with a diverse background in academic research and engineering seeking for a career transition to data and AI engineer. Skilled in Python, SQL, Alteryx, Tableau, Power BI and cloud platforms such as, GCP, AWS and AZURE. Detail-oriented and quick to adapt to evolving business needs and industry trends, with a passion for leveraging data to drive decision making and innovation.