When visualizing client data, one of the protocols is to strictly adhere is the clients’ color scheme. This is to cater to their design communication and consistency requirements.
While colors can be individually picked and added to a Custom colors’ list, it is often more convenient to have a palette for assigning colors directly to your visual.
Colors are identified using Hex codes. These are hexadecimal formats for colors. Because they’re unique, each shade of a particular
color gets its own Hex code. Read more on Hex codes HERE. One of the sites readily providing Hex codes is Adobe Color Wheel.
Below is a quick and easy tutorial on how to prepare and import custom color palette.
Step 1: Go to My Tableau Repository. Path to this location looks somewhat like – C:\..\Documents\My Tableau Repository.
Step 2: Open the Preferences file using Notepad. This is of the format – Tableau Preferences File (.tps). The default notepad looks as below.
Step 3: Create a palette and add required colors in the format as shown below.
The highlighted “SR Palette” is the palette name. And, the following 3 highlighted lines carry the hex codes for the individual colors.
Step 4: Save the text file to apply changes. And, if Tableau was open during the last 3 steps, close and reopen.
The new palette can be seen under the ‘Select Color Palette’ drop-down (at the very bottom)
So, there you have it. A quick 4 step tutorial to create and add a custom color palette to Tableau.
