Tableau QT: Dual Bar Charts

This is a Quick Tip on how to build Dual Bar Charts in Tableau, so less reading and more jumping in. We are going to spend 5 minutes or less building our Dual Bar charts.

Data

Load the following data into Tableau Desktop / Public.

Worksheet

• Drag Country onto Rows.
• Drag Sales (2017) onto Columns.
• Drag Sales (2018) onto Columns.
• Right-click on the Sales (2018) pill in columns and select Dual Axis.
• Right-click on the Sales (2018) header and select Synchronized Axis.
• In the All Marks Panel:
  • Change the Mark Type to Bar.
  • Remove the Measure Names from Color.
• In the SUM(Sales (2017)) Marks Panel:
  • Click on Color and select a shade of Grey.
  • Click on Size and set the size to 75%.
  • This will represent the previous year.
• In the SUM(Sales (2018)) Marks Panel:
  • Drag Country onto Color.
  • Click on Color and set the border to White.
  • Drag Target Sales (2018) onto Detail.
  • Click on Size and set the size to 50%.
• On the Canvas:
  • Right-click on the Sales (2018) header and choose Add Reference Line.
  • In the Add Reference Line, Band, or Box:
    • Set Scope to Per Cell.
    • Set Value to SUM(Target Sales (2018)).
    • Set Label to None.
    • Set Line to Dots and Second Smallest Size.
    • Click Ok.

Now we need to adjust the visualisation by:

• Editing tooltips.
• Editing colours.
• Remove gridlines.
• Hide headers.

And you should then end up with something like the following:

This is a nice and quick visualisation that a lot of my clients really seem to like. For example, you can see the following extremely quickly:

• Germany is the only country whose 2018 sales Exceeded their 2018 target.
• India and the United States 2018 sales DID NOT surpass their respective 2017 sales.
• France and the United Kingdoms 2018 sales Exceeded 2017 sales but DID NOT surpass their 2018 targets. 

Summary

I hope you all enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Do let me know if you experienced any issues recreating this Visualisation, and as always, please leave a comment below or reach out to me on Twitter @Tableau_Magic.

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