Do you want to know how to abbreviate the month name in Tableau? Maybe the Month name taking up too much space on your Tableau dashboard?
Often space is limited on a dashboard so you need to save as much as possible.
Tableau uses a lot of space is displaying months. On a line chart showing with months on the X-axis, Tableau displays the full month name – i.e. January, February…December.
This takes up a lot of space. It would be better if abbreviated to Jan, Feb, etc.
How to abbreviate the month name in Tableau
There are two ways to abbreviate the month name in Tableau.
- Format the date field
- Use a formula
Shorten the month name by formatting
The simplest way to abbreviate the month is by formatting the month field as the 3 letter month. This differs slightly depending on whether the month field is discrete (blue) or continuous (green).
abbreviate a discrete month with formatting
Right click the blue (discrete) Month pill and Format. This opens the Format window.
Set the Default – Dates format as Abbreviation. This sets the month as the 3 letter, shortened, month.
Format a Continuous Month to abbreviate
Right client the green (continuous) month and Format, which opens the Format window.
Format the Axis – Scale. Choose a Custom format and set the custom format as “mmm”. This is the format for a 3 letter abbreviated month.
Abbreviate the Month Name using a calculated field
Abbreviating the month is straightforward with a calculated field.
The formula is: LEFT(DATENAME('month',[MyDateToConvert]),3)
Use this calculated field in the place of your current month pill.