Create Content26% of the exam
Color, shapes, annotations and tooltips
Style views precisely: center a diverging palette and pick color effects (borders, halos, markers, opacity), copy worksheet formatting, set default and custom shapes, add Preferences.tps palettes, choose mark, point or area annotations, and fix tooltip asterisks, Include in Tooltip and Viz in Tooltip limits.
Format workbooks, worksheets, and dashboards: Apply color, font, shapes, styling; Add custom shapes and color palettes; Add annotations; Customize tooltips; Apply padding; Format gridlines, row-level and column-level bands, and shading; Create a responsive design for specific device layouts.
~7 min read · 13 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Configure Edit Colors for a continuous field (Advanced Start, End and Center, stepped, reversed, full color range) and choose color effects: opacity, borders, halos and markers.
- Reuse styling with Copy Formatting and Paste Formatting, and know what does not carry over.
- Assign default shapes on a field and add custom shapes and Preferences.tps color palettes that work.
- Pick a mark, point or area annotation and know what web authoring can do with annotations.
- Customize tooltips: ATTR asterisks, Include in Tooltip and Viz in Tooltip limits.
Key terms:
- Diverging palette: two color ranges meeting at a neutral center.
- Mark halo: a solid contrasting color around marks over a background map or image.
- Preferences.tps: the XML file in My Tableau Repository that holds custom palettes in Tableau Desktop 2025.2 and earlier.
- Area annotation: a callout for a region, not tied to one mark.
- Viz in Tooltip: a worksheet shown, filtered, inside another sheet's tooltip.
Key facts
Advanced Center
- Detail
- Sets the neutral point; not available in Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud
Mark borders
- Detail
- All mark types except text, line and shape
Mark halos
- Detail
- Only with a background image or map
Copy Formatting
- Detail
- Skips reference lines and annotations
Default shape
- Detail
- Data pane > Default Properties > Shape; shared across sheets on the data source
Colored custom shapes
- Detail
- Need a transparent background (PNG or GIF)
Palette types
- Detail
- regular, ordered-sequential, ordered-diverging
New palettes appear
- Detail
- After saving Preferences.tps and restarting Tableau Desktop
Web annotations
- Detail
- Create and delete only; no formatting or moving
Tooltip asterisk
- Detail
- ATTR over several members; fix with Detail
Viz in Tooltip target
- Detail
- Worksheets only; one source sheet per target at a time
Sources for this section (6)
- Color Palettes and Effectshelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Worksheet formattinghelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Mark appearancehelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Custom Color Paletteshelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Add Annotationshelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Viz in Tooltiphelp.tableau.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why would you choose Reversed on a diverging palette?
- What does Stepped Color do to a continuous palette?
- About what size should a custom shape image be?
- Why might a long custom palette seem cut short in Edit Colors?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
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