# How to change Column header limit in Tableau Desktop 2019.4 and newer

> 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:** 2020-01-05
- **Format:** Video · 2 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Tableau (formatting)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-change-column-header-limit-in-tableau-desktop-2019-4-and-newer
- **Watch:** https://www.youtu.be/Rh3sv3GXTKE

I show a new feature in Tableau 2019.4 that raises the limit on the number of column and row headers in a table from 16 to 50. I walk through where to find the setting and demonstrate how header concatenation occurs once you exceed the limit.

## Key takeaways

- 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

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/how-to-change-column-header-limit-in-tableau-desktop-2019-4-and-newer

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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