Tableau Format Month

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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.

  1. Format the date field
  2. 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.

set the custom format of the discrete blue month pill
Abbreviate a blue pill 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.

set the custom format of the continuous green month pill
Abbreviate a green pill 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.

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