Tableau | Data visualisation How to change Column header limit in Tableau Desktop 2019.4 and newer
Tired of Tableau squashing your headers into one column? Here's how 2019.4 lets you have up to 50.
- In Tableau 2019.3 you were limited to 16 header levels in columns or rows, but 2019.4 raises this to 50
- The setting lives under Analysis > Table Layout > Advanced, in the table options menu
- When you exceed the configured limit, Tableau concatenates fields such as subcategory and category into a single column
- Increasing the limit gives each header value its own individual column, fully displaying up to 50 levels
Tableau 2019.4 raises the maximum number of column or row header levels a table can fully display from 16 to 50, so you can build wider hierarchical tables without fields getting squashed together.
Built on a simple table with multiple header fields (e.g. category and subcategory) in the columns or rows shelf. The point becomes visible once the number of header levels exceeds the configured limit.
- Open the table header limit setting 0:00
Go to Analysis > Table Layout > Advanced to open the table options, where you'll find a setting controlling how many header levels can display.
- Know the old vs new limit 0:23
In Tableau 2019.3 this limit was fixed at 16 header levels for columns or rows; in 2019.4 the same setting allows up to 50.
- See what happens below the limit 1:01
If you set the limit lower than the number of header fields you have (e.g. 3), adding another field beyond that causes Tableau to concatenate fields together into a single column rather than showing them separately.
- Raise the limit to separate concatenated fields 1:20
Increasing the limit to match or exceed your number of header levels (e.g. back to 4) removes the concatenation, giving each field its own individual column again — this is the fix to apply whenever you see fields merged unexpectedly.
- Concatenation happens silently once you exceed the configured limit, so unexpected merged headers are often just this setting being too low rather than a data issue.
Reach for this when you're building a table with several nested header levels (like category and subcategory) and notice fields being squashed together into one column.
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