50 Tableau Desktop Foundations Practice Questions: Question Bank 2025

An analyst needs to combine an Excel file containing monthly targets with a database table containing actual sales. The two sources share a common field called Region. The analyst wants both targets and actuals available in the same view without altering the underlying data sources. What should the analyst do in Tableau?

A user connects to a CSV file and notices a field named Order Date is being treated as a string (Abc) instead of a date. What is the best way to fix this in Tableau Desktop?

A dashboard shows a KPI sheet and a detail table. The requirement is: when a user clicks a bar in a chart, the detail table should update to show only the selected category, while the KPI remains unchanged. What should the author use?

A worksheet shows Sales by Sub-Category as horizontal bars. The labels overlap and are difficult to read. Which change is most likely to improve readability without changing the underlying data?

A manager wants a dashboard that lets users choose a metric (Sales, Profit, or Quantity) from a single control and then updates multiple charts accordingly. What is the recommended approach in Tableau?

A user needs to show each Region’s percentage of total Sales in a single bar chart. What is the simplest way to achieve this in Tableau?

A workbook contains a published data source that others will reuse. The owner wants to ensure that anyone who connects to it sees only rows for their assigned Territory, based on their Tableau Server/Cloud username. What capability should be used?

A user publishes a workbook to Tableau Server/Cloud and later updates the local workbook to fix a calculation. They want to update the published content without creating a new workbook item. What should they do?

A dashboard includes a map and several charts. Users complain the dashboard is slow to load and interact with. Which design choice is most likely to improve performance while preserving interactivity?

An analyst needs to clean a field that contains values like "$1,250" and "($300)" so it can be used as a numeric measure. Which approach is most appropriate in Tableau Desktop without changing the source file?

A user connects to a single Excel file and wants to analyze a large dataset faster in Tableau Desktop. Which connection type is generally recommended to improve performance?

You are building a map and want Tableau to automatically recognize a field as geographic (e.g., State/Province) so it can be placed on a map. What is the best action in Tableau Desktop?

A stakeholder wants a simple way to view details for a single mark in a scatter plot without adding another worksheet. Which feature should you use?

You join Orders to Returns in Tableau Desktop and notice the number of Orders has increased unexpectedly. Returns contains multiple rows per Order ID. What is the most likely cause?

A dashboard needs to show a KPI, a trend chart, and a detail table. Users should click a region in the trend chart to update the detail table to that region. What is the recommended approach?

You need to display each product’s percent of total sales within its Category (not across the entire dataset). Which calculation is most appropriate?

A workbook contains several worksheets that should all show the same Top N Customers based on Sales. The value of N should be adjustable by the user. Which design is best practice?

Your dashboard has multiple sheets, each with its own local filters. Users complain they must repeat the same selections on every sheet. What is the best way to apply one filter selection across relevant worksheets?

You publish a workbook to Tableau Server/Cloud and want viewers to always see up-to-date data from a database, but you also need fast performance and the ability to schedule refreshes without users opening the workbook. Which approach best meets these needs?

A view shows a running total of Sales by month. When a user filters the view to a single Region, the running total no longer starts at the first month of the year as expected. What is the most effective fix?

You need to analyze sales by month, but your data source provides separate fields for Year, Month, and Day as numbers. What is the best way to create a usable date for time-series analysis in Tableau?

A worksheet shows a blank view after you apply a filter on [Region]. Other filters and the data source are working. Which step is the most likely to reveal why no marks are shown?

You need to share a packaged workbook with a colleague who does not have access to your file-based data source (for example, an Excel file). What should you send?

A dashboard contains a map and a bar chart. Selecting a state on the map should filter the bar chart to only that state. Which dashboard action should you use?

Your dataset has one row per order with [Order Date], [Ship Date], and [Order ID]. You need a measure that returns the number of days between order and ship for each order and can be averaged across orders. Which calculation is most appropriate?

You connect to two tables: Orders (Order ID, Customer ID, Order Date) and Returns (Order ID, Return Reason). You want to keep all orders, showing return information only when it exists. What join type should you use in the data source?

You published a data source to Tableau Server/Cloud and want workbook authors to always see the newest data without manual refreshes of local files. What is the recommended approach?

A view shows multiple bars per customer and you need to label only the Top 5 customers by sales, regardless of how many customers are displayed. What is the best way to achieve this in Tableau?

You want to show a running total of Sales across months in a line chart. The running total appears to restart for each product even though you want it to run across time independently within each product pane. What setting most directly controls this behavior for the table calculation?

A dashboard has multiple worksheets using different data sources. You add a filter for [Category] from one worksheet, but it does not filter the other worksheets as expected. What is the most likely reason?

A user needs to analyze a very large text file that is updated daily. They want fast performance in Tableau Desktop while keeping the source file unchanged. What is the best approach?

You want to create a KPI tile that shows total Sales in large text, and its color should change based on whether Sales are above or below a target. Which approach is most appropriate?

A worksheet is filtered to the last 30 days using a relative date filter. The analyst wants dashboard viewers to change the window (e.g., last 7, 30, or 90 days) without editing the workbook. What should the analyst do?

You are publishing a workbook and want to ensure colleagues see the same fonts, number formats, and colors you used, without needing local files. What should you include when publishing?

A dataset stores dates as strings like "2026-01-15". In Tableau, the field is treated as a string and can’t be used with date functions. What is the recommended fix?

A dashboard has multiple worksheets that should update together when a viewer selects a region in one chart. What should you configure?

An analyst builds a view with Year on Columns and SUM(Sales) on Rows. They add a quick table calculation for Percent Difference. The result compares each year to the previous year, but they need each year compared to the first year in the view. What should they change?

A workbook includes a data source that uses custom SQL. After publishing, viewers report slow load times. Which change is most likely to improve performance while keeping analysis in Tableau?

A dashboard uses a set action to let users click bars to define which Sub-Categories are “in focus.” The analyst also wants a calculation to behave differently for items in the set versus out of the set. Which calculation pattern should be used?

A team publishes a data source for certified, governed use. Workbook authors should be able to build new workbooks from it, but should not be able to download the full underlying data. Which combination best supports this requirement?

A user connects to a large text file and notices the data types are incorrect (for example, dates are treated as strings). What is the recommended first step in Tableau Desktop to correct this before building views?

A bar chart shows Sales by Region. The business asks to see each region’s percentage of total sales across all regions. Which approach is most appropriate?

A dashboard contains several sheets. Users want to click a bar in one sheet to filter the rest of the dashboard to that selection. What should the author configure?

You have Orders in one table and Returns in another table. You need to analyze all orders, while showing return information only when it exists. What join type best supports this requirement?

A view includes many marks and labels overlap heavily. The goal is to keep the view readable while still allowing users to access details when needed. Which is the best practice?

A workbook uses a fixed Level of Detail (LOD) expression to calculate Customer Lifetime Sales: { FIXED [Customer ID] : SUM([Sales]) }. The view is filtered by Order Date. The result does not change when the user applies a standard dimension filter on Order Date. What is the most likely reason?

You publish a workbook to Tableau Server/Cloud. Viewers can open the workbook but cannot see the underlying data when they click "View Data." What is the most likely cause?

A data source contains a Product Category field with inconsistent values (e.g., "Tech", "Technology", "TECH"). You want to standardize these values for consistent reporting, preferably within Tableau Desktop. What is the best approach?

A dashboard has a filter for Region intended to apply to multiple worksheets that use the same data source. However, changing the filter only affects one sheet. What is the most likely fix?

A worksheet displays Month and Sales. You need a calculation that returns the Sales value from the previous month for each mark to support a month-over-month difference. Which table calculation is most appropriate?