Tableau Pie Treemap and Highlight Table

Beyond bar and line charts, Tableau offers several specialized chart types for showing part-to-whole relationships and comparing values in a grid. Pie charts, treemaps, and highlight tables each serve a distinct purpose. Knowing when to use each prevents common visualization mistakes.

Pie Charts

A pie chart shows how individual parts make up a whole. Each slice represents one category. The slice angle shows what percentage of the total that category holds.

When Pie Charts Work

Pie charts work well when you have fewer than 5 or 6 slices and the differences between slices are obvious. A pie with 15 slices becomes unreadable. A pie with 3 clearly different slices is fast and intuitive.

Building a Pie Chart

1. Change the Marks type dropdown from "Automatic" to "Pie"
2. Drag a Measure (e.g., Sales) to Angle in the Marks Card
3. Drag a Dimension (e.g., Category) to Color in the Marks Card
4. Tableau draws the pie with one slice per category value

Diagram: Pie Chart

Total Sales by Category:
+----------------------------+
|      \  Furniture (25%)    |
|       \__________________  |
|  Tech  |                   |
|  (45%) |   Office (30%)    |
|        |                   |
+----------------------------+

Best for: Showing that Technology dominates
          at almost half of all sales

Pie Chart Limitation

Human eyes struggle to compare slice angles accurately. Two slices of 30% and 35% look nearly identical in a pie. A bar chart makes the same comparison obvious. Reserve pie charts for showing clear dominant vs minor splits — not for tight comparisons.

Treemaps

A treemap fills a rectangle with colored blocks. Each block represents one category. The block's size shows its value — bigger block means bigger value. The block's color can show a second measure. Treemaps pack a lot of categories into a small space efficiently.

Building a Treemap

1. Click the Treemap option in Show Me (requires at least one Dimension and one Measure)
2. Or change Marks type to "Square," drag a Measure to Size, and drag a Dimension to Color
3. Drag a Dimension to Label to show names inside each block

Diagram: Treemap Layout

+-------------------------------------------+
|                           |               |
|                           |   Office      |
|   Technology              |   Supplies    |
|   (45% of Sales)          |   (30%)       |
|                           |               |
|                           +-------+-------+
|                           | Art   | Other |
+-------------------------------------------+

Block size = Sales amount
Darker shade = Higher profit within each block

Treemap Advantage Over Pie

Treemaps handle many more categories than pie charts. A treemap with 20 categories remains readable. A pie with 20 slices is a useless spiral of color. Use treemaps when you have 6 or more categories to compare.

Adding a Second Measure to Treemap

Drag a second Measure (e.g., Profit) to the Color box in the Marks Card. The treemap now uses a diverging color scale — green for profitable blocks and red for loss-making blocks. Size still shows Sales while color shows Profit health. Two measures visualized at once, no extra space required.

Highlight Tables

A highlight table is a grid of numbers colored by value. It looks like a spreadsheet but the cell background color signals high and low values at a glance. High values get a dark color, low values get a light color — or the other way around depending on your palette choice.

Building a Highlight Table

1. Drag a Dimension to Rows (e.g., Category)
2. Drag another Dimension to Columns (e.g., Region)
3. Drag a Measure to the Color box in the Marks Card (e.g., Sales)
4. Click the Show Me panel and select "Highlight Table"
5. Drag the same Measure to the Label box to show numbers inside each cell

Diagram: Highlight Table

               East      West      South     Central
               ----      ----      -----     -------
Furniture    | $500  |  $300  |   $200  |   $400  |
             | [med] |  [low] |  [v.low]|   [med] |
             +--------+--------+---------+---------+
Technology   | $900  |  $800  |   $500  |   $700  |
             | [high]|  [high]|   [med] |   [high]|
             +--------+--------+---------+---------+
Office Sup.  | $350  |  $250  |   $300  |   $200  |
             | [low] |  [low] |   [low] |  [v.low]|

Darker cell = higher sales value
Light cell = lower sales value

When to Use Which Chart

Formatting Color Palettes

Click the Color box in the Marks Card and select "Edit Colors." For sequential data (low to high), choose a single-color gradient like blue or orange. For diverging data (negative to positive), choose a diverging palette like red-white-green. Matching the palette to the data's nature makes patterns immediately obvious.

Summary

Pie charts show proportions for a small number of clearly different categories. Treemaps pack many categories into a rectangle using block size and color to encode two measures. Highlight tables apply color to a grid of numbers, turning a spreadsheet into a visual heat map. Each of these three chart types specializes in part-to-whole and cross-category comparisons that bar and line charts do not handle as elegantly.