How to filter out null values in year over year growth calculations in Tableau

In this silent video, you'll learn how to filter out null values in year over year growth calculations.

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Table calculations are computations that Tableau applies to the values in an entire table. How these calculations work is often dependent on the structure of the table. For example, in a sales environment, you can use a table calculation to compute the running total of sales across a specified date range, or to compare multiple months of sales and compute each month’s contribution to the total sales.

When you calculate comparisons such as year-over-year growth, the first year in your data table is empty because it has no previous years to compare itself to. If you want to hide that first year from the resulting Tableau view, a first thought might be to use a filter to remove it. However, doing that changes the calculation. Instead, you can use a filter to remove null (empty) values without changing the calculation. Here are a couple of examples for when you might want to hide the first year.

1. On the Marks card, right-click SUM(Sales) and select Filter.
2. In the Filter dialog box, notice that, by default, Include null values is not selected, and then click OK.

Simply by clicking OK to instantiate the filter, you tell Tableau to remove the null values. Tableau filters table calculations after the data is retrieved from the database, whereas an Exclude filter is applied before the table calculation is performed.

Related solutions:

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