# How to build Maps in Tableau | Tableau Charts

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2023-02-15
- **Format:** Video · 7 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (filters, maps)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-build-maps-in-tableau-tableau-charts
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7eRXu9mHns

I walk through building maps in Tableau, starting with simple dot maps and moving on to filled maps with colour encoding. I also cover the common pitfalls around unrecognised geographical fields, assigning geographical roles, and resolving ambiguous or unknown locations.

## Key takeaways

- Double-clicking any geographical field (marked with a globe icon) generates a dot map automatically, and you can encode values like sales onto size
- Switch from a dot map to a filled map via the marks pane, then use colour rather than size to encode values since geographical areas are fixed
- If Tableau doesn't recognise a field as geographical, assign it a geographical role via the field dropdown to enable mapping
- Resolve 'unknown places' by editing locations and pointing Tableau to a country/region field to disambiguate locations with shared names
- Customise map appearance through background maps, background layers, and opacity to switch on or off details like roads, water and neighbourhoods

## Chapters

- 0:00 Building dot maps
- 1:00 Creating filled maps
- 1:52 Styling and background maps
- 2:27 Fixing unrecognised geographical fields
- 3:42 Resolving unknown and ambiguous locations

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-build-maps-in-tableau-tableau-charts

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena