The Top option in Tableau filter is used to limit the result set from a filter. For example, from a large set of records on sales you want only the top 10 values. You can apply this filter using the inbuilt options for limiting the records in many ways or by creating a formula. In this chapter, you will explore the inbuilt options.

Creating a Top Filter

Using the Sample-superstore, find the sub-category of products which represents the top 5 sales amount. To achieve this objective, following are the steps.

Step 1 − Drag the dimension Sub-Category to the Rows shelf and the Measure Sales to the Columns shelf. Choose the horizontal bar as the chart type. Tableau shows the following chart.

Step 2 − Right-click on the field Sub-Category and go to the tab named Top. Here, choose the second radio option by field. From the drop-down, choose the option Top 5 by Sum of Sales.

On completion of the above step, you will get the following chart, which shows the top 5 Sub-Category of products by sales.