Change the color sequence in charts

- [Instructor] Programs that let you create charts and graphs apply built-in color sequences to those schemes. In this movie, I will show you how to change the color scheme that Tableau applies to your chart elements. As my sample file, I will use the 11_03 Sequence workbook, and you can find it in the Chapter 11 folder of the exercise files collection. You're probably looking at this visualization, and wondering exactly what the color sequence is that I'm talking about. I mean, everything appears to be blue, and that is correct. I have a one-color color sequence.

If I want to make each item, up to 10, a different color, then I need to apply a color palette. If I want to do that, then I will need to assign colors based on "Product Category." And you see the "Product Category" is what's used to separate each column, in this column chart, along the horizontal axis. So I will go over to the data panel, and drag "Product Category" to the color box on the "Marks" card.

And, there you can see that Tableau has applied a built-in color sequence. But now let's say that I want to change the color of one item, for example, I don't think this, sort of light teal for "light bulbs" is a good color for this visualization. If I want to change it, I can go over to the legend, which appears here, right-click the "light bulbs" item, and click "edit colors." Then, from this color palette, I can select a new color I want to apply. In this case, I'll do gray, and click OK, and click away, and, you can see that the change has been applied.

I can also change the order of the items in this visualization. So let's say that, instead of having "batteries" on the left, I want to put "batteries" all the way to the right. I can make that change in the "Product Category" legend, by dragging the "batteries" item to its new position. So as I drag it down, you can see a black line appears, and that is where, in order, the field will appear on the visualization when I release the left mouse button, which I'll do now. And, "batteries" has appeared all the way on the right.

If I wanted to move it to the middle, between "light bulbs" and "solar panels," I could just drag it up, and when the line's in place, release the mouse button, and I've made my change. The order of the data in your visualization is completely up to you, and you also have a lot of control over the colors that represent each individual item.