How to display 40 + columns in Tableau?

Question

I am trying to do a list report with about 40 columns(Dims+measure) but not able to get it right, the requirement pushes the Tableau limitation by exploiting its limit to only 16 columns.

How can I get this done?

I read this

Here is my Tableau workbook with 16+ columns but no column header

Answer 1

The measures names and measures values special fields can help here and covers most use cases. (Using the measure names and values fields is likely a better choice than creating 40+ marks cards as you did in your posted example)

Put Measure Names on the column and filter shelves and measure values on the text shelf. Then add the measure fields you want to the Measures Values shelf. Then put the dimensions that you wish on the rows shelf.

A single field+aggregation can only be on the Measure Values shelf once, but a field can repeat with different aggregations -- so you can show the min, avg and max of a measure in 3 different columns.

As you mentioned, you can increase the max col and row headers up to 16 each via the Analysis->Table Layout->Advanced menu and panel. Beyond that point, adjacent columns will still display, just be coalesced for display.

Still you can have an apparently arbitrary number of fields on the measures values shelf, so can display as many columns of measures (data) as you wish, even though adjacent header columns for dimension (~category) get coalesced for display once you hit the header limit.

Tableau is optimized for summarizing data for efficient interpretation by humans, so displaying extremely wide tables of data is not the best fit for the tool (or a human reader frankly). Importing and exporting large tables is certainly possible.

Answer 2

Here is a workaround for some data sets:

• convert your fields from Dimension to Measure, and then
• display using Measure Names / Measure Values, as @Alex Blakemore suggested.

For example, Boolean fields can be converted to numeric using INT().

PROS:

1. It is easier to change which fields to plot using Measure Names / Measure Values.
2. Faster performance, at least for some data sets.

CONS:

1. Often data sets have some fields that cannot or should not be converted to measure.
2. Not as easy or straightforward as changing Analysis > Table Layout > Advanced settings, or the xml-editing workaround suggested by @Cyndi1976.