Fixed Calculation Tableau -
[Sales] = FIXED [Sub-Category] : MAX([Sales]) Drag this Flag to the Color shelf. Filter to True .
If you are in doubt, use FIXED . It gives you the most control because it does not try to guess what dimensions are in your view. The Silent Killer: Dimension Filters You must know one danger: Order of Operations . fixed calculation tableau
But what if you want the FIXED calculation to respect the year? [Sales] = FIXED [Sub-Category] : MAX([Sales]) Drag this
If you just count Customer Name by Month of Order Date , you are counting transactions , not unique customers. Worse, if someone bought in Jan and Feb, they appear in both months. It gives you the most control because it
| LOD Type | Logic | Best for | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Calculate only by these dimensions. Ignore everything else in the view. | "What is the company max sales?" "First purchase date per user." | | INCLUDE | Calculate by view dimensions + these extra ones. | "What is the average sales per day, even if my view is by month?" | | EXCLUDE | Calculate by view dimensions, but remove these ones. | "What is the total US sales, ignoring state level detail?" |
Result: Tableau looks at all chairs, finds the single highest sales number, and highlights only that row. Do not try to memorize every LOD syntax. Instead, memorize this question:
Imagine you have a dataset with 10,000 rows. A FIXED calculation runs once, creates a temporary lookup table (e.g., 100 unique customers), and then pastes that result back onto every relevant row.