Question 1:
Please refer below screenshot. I want to highlight profit with dark color. But the output is confusing.
On which basis Tableau decides shades of colors ? Why yellow color shade for entire column of furniture ?
Question 2:
(a) In which scenario you may need to publish excel file into the tableau server ?
(b) I came across below statement; but I am not able to find EDIT CONNECTION menu. Can you please paste the screenshot ?
- In Tableau Desktop, select the data source from the Data menu, and select Edit Connection.
Sorry for the delay in responding. You've chosen to color each block by profit, so basically Tableau will, by default, assign the color on one end of the scale (the left, by default) to the lowest value (i.e. lowest total profit) and the color on the right to the highest total value. If you do not use stepped color, then it will gradually change the color going from smallest to largest. So, for example, if the lowest profit is $0 and the highest is $100 and we are using the Green-Gold color palette, then 0 will be assigned gold and 100 will be assigned green. 50 will be assigned the color right in the middle of the scale. 25 will be assigned a color 1/4 to the right of 0, etc.
In the example below, the profit ranges from $29 (in the lower right hand corner) to $50,304.
In your example, however, you're using stepped color. In this case, instead of a blending of color across the scale, it breaks the scale into distinct colors going from the left color to the right color. It then determines which of the 5 sections the number will fit into. Using our 0 to 100 example, the values 0-20 would appear in the first color (gold), 21-40 the second, 41-60 the third, 61-80 the fourth, and 81-100 the final (green).
It is true that furniture "sales" are increasing year over year, but remember that you're coloring the block based on profit, not sales. If we were to display the profit as text, instead of sales, it will become more clear. The first color would be anything ranging from 29 to around 10,000 or so. Furniture profits are well below 10,000 for each year, thus they are gold.
Question 2a: If your data source is in Excel format, you may need to publish that to Tableau Server. For example, let's say you have an Excel spreadsheet that someone updates daily. You can publish that spreadsheet as a data source to Tableau Server, then set up up to automatically refresh on a regular basis, such as daily. Excel is a very common data source, so this is something you might do on a regular basis.
Hope that helps.
