Data Types in Tableau

Tableau supports 7 types of data types String values, Date values, Date & Time values, Numeric values, Boolean values, Geographical values, Cluster or mixed values.

Introduction

Data types in Tableau gives information about the kind of data/information that can be stored in the data source.

There are seven different data types in tableau String values, Date values, Date & Time values, Numeric values, Boolean values, Geographical values, Cluster or mixed values.

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Let’s discuss them one by one briefly:

Table of Content

• String Values
  • Char
  • Varchar
• Date Values
• Date & Time Values
• Numeric Values
• Boolean Values
• Geographical Values
• Cluster or Mixed Values
• Data Type icons in Tableau

String Data Type

• Text Data type
• Characters are enclosed in single or double quotes
  • “Shiksha Online” or ‘Shiksha Online’
• String values are of two types:- Char and Varchar

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Char Data Type

• The length of the string is pre-defined or fixed
  • i.e. if you enter the value greater than defined it will show error 
• Stores alpha-numeric values

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Varchar Data type

• Varchar stands for Variable character
• The length of the string is variable
  •  i.e. you can enter as many values as you want
• Stores alpha-numeric values

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Date and Date & Time Data Type

• Tableau support all date formats like
  • dd-mm-yy, dd-mm-yyyy, mm-dd-yyyy etc.
• Date and time data type is an extension of Date data type
• Time data values can be
  • Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades etc.
• If you want to add date value in the form of a string, add # symbol before,
  • Example: # 11 March 2022

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Numeric Data Type

• Numeric values can be either:- Integer or Floating
  • Integer: 10, -5, 0
  • Floating (decimal): 2.536, 0.6667, -3.14 
• Integer are preferred over floating values as it’s difficult to accumulate decimal point after a certain limit.
• Round( ) is used to round the float values.

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Boolean Data Type

• Boolean data types have two logical values:- True or False.
• True and False are also represented by 1 and 0 respectively
  • Example: “ Is profit greater than zero?”- “Yes” or “No”
  • In the tableau, it becomes a boolean calculation:
    • SUM([Profit]) > 0

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Geographical Data Type

• Data values are used in Maps
• Associates each value in a field with latitude and longitude value
• Includes values such as postal code, region, city, state, country etc.

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Cluster or Mixed Data Types

Tableau is capable of identifying the data type but sometimes the data field doesn’t match the data type.

Mix values create a problem while analyzing the data.

This problem can be resolved by creating a separate column that doesn’t contain the mixed values.

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Data Type icons in Tableau

Icon	Data type
	Text (string) values
	Date values
	Date & Time values
	Numerical values
	Boolean values
	Geographic values
	Cluster or Mixed values

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed different data types in tableau: string, numerical, date, date & time, Boolean, geographical, and mixed data type.

Hope this article will help you in your data analyst journey.

This article is a part of a complete tutorial of Tableau, focusing on Tableau certified data analysts and tableau desktop specialists. 

Through a series of articles, we will cover all the topics in-depth with examples.