Did you know that you can add custom colour palettes to Tableau by editing your "Preferences" file? Here's how:
1. Locate your Tableau Desktop "Preferences" file.
The Tableau Desktop Preferences file is located in your Documents - My Tableau Repository Folder. Once you've found this file, right-click on it and open it in "Notepad" - this is how you will edit the html code.
Desktop > Documents > My Tableau Repository > Preferences > [right-click and open in Notepad]
Once you open up the Preferences file in Notepad, this is the kind of code you will see. We will be editing this to create and add some custom colour pallettes to Tableau Desktop!
2. Decide on your Colour palette!
Looking at the preferences code, we can see that each colour palette code starts with the <color-palette> opening tag, and closes with </color-palette> tag. To create your own, you just need to make a few decisions with regards to your colour palette:
- The name of your colour palette - (this can be anything you'd like!)
- The type of colour palette - Regular, Ordered-sequential, Ordered-diverging
- How many colours you would like? / Which colours?
Regular colour palettes are great for colouring discrete categories, while sequential and diverging colour palettes are ideal for continuous measures.
3. Resources for finding the perfect colour HEX codes
Some great resources for finding the right colour HEX codes for your palette include:
4. Copy & Paste examples
Here are some colour palette examples I made that you can copy and paste into your preferences file. All you have to do is replace the HEX codes (e.g. #000000) with your own colour choices.
Regular
Ordered-diverging
Ordered-sequential
Once you've updated your preferences file, hit save and restart Tableau Desktop. Your new colour palettes should now be there and ready to use!