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Tableau | Data visualisation

Block comments in calculations

Tableau finally added block comments to calculations, and it's a quality of life win I've wanted for years.

Tim Ngwena •15 December 2020 •1 min read •2 min watch •1.6K

The old way of commenting in Tableau calculations required adding a forward slash on every single line you wanted to comment out.
Block comments let you open with a forward slash and star, write across multiple lines, then close with a star and backslash.
This feature is available across desktop, Tableau Online and Tableau Server in the browser from version 2020.4.

0:00Hey, it's Tim here. Every so often, Tableau

0:02adds a quality of life improvements that

0:04literally just changes your life. Today

0:07they've added block comments and that is

0:09literally going

0:09to change your life. Let me show you why. I

0:12'm going to go ahead here and create a

0:13calculation.

0:14I'm just going to go ahead and do it here

0:16and notice I'm doing this in the browser.

0:19This is

0:19available on desktop but seeing as most of

0:21this release is all available in the

0:23browser,

0:23I'm taking a punt and doing everything in

0:26this series in the browser. So if you're

0:27using 2020.4

0:29you can of course do this in desktop but I

0:30'm going to do it in the browser for the

0:34sake of it

0:34essentially. I'm going to hit forward slash

0:36and I'm just going to show you how you used

0:37to comment

0:38before. You used to comment one line at a

0:41time. I can't spell for the record so time.

0:45Here we are,

0:46one line at a time. Gosh, I really can't

0:49spell. One line at a time. There we go.

0:52What would happen

0:53is if you went to a new line you'd have to

0:55do it again. You kept on having to do this

0:59if you just wanted the comment to go on

1:01multiple lines. In this latest version they

1:04've done this

1:06which is great. You can just do a forward

1:08slash and a star. Say what you'd like to

1:10say.

1:11I can't type to say. Carry on on a new line

1:17and keep going like a boss.

1:23And then to close the comment you can just

1:25go on a new line, star, backslash and boom

1:28we have

1:28multi-line comments. This is great. You can

1:30actually have nice looking comments all

1:33done

1:33nicely in one place. Nothing fancy required

1:35and this is a great feature. It's available

1:38on desktop

1:38and online and Tableau server as well in

1:41the browser. So this is going to be coming

1:43to all

1:43versions of Tableau that you're going to be

1:46using. So this is a great quality of life

1:48improvement. I

1:48can't tell you how many times I've wanted

1:50this feature. What I hope you don't get is

1:53people

1:53writing whole paragraphs in the comments

1:55boxes but hey ho this is always going to

1:56happen when

1:57people want to document everything properly

1:59. So that's pretty much it. That's the

2:00feature

2:00in a nutshell. Very very simple. Great

2:02quality of life improvement. If you've

2:04enjoyed the video you

2:05know what to do. If not hit the dislike

2:07button twice and I'll catch you in the next

2:08one.

Ever wanted to write comments across multiple lines? It’s now possible with the new way of writing comments across multiple lines in Tableau 2020.4

Tableau release notes

Quickly add comments of any length to your calculation windows with block comments. Simply start your comment with /* and end with */ to enable your comment to span multiple lines.