How To Make a Histogram in Tableau, Excel, and Google Sheets

Creating a histogram in Tableau can be achieved quite easily by using the Show Me function. The following steps are based on Tableau version 2020.2.

To create the histogram with Show Me, follow these steps:

1. Drag the chosen Measure to Columns. This will result in an automatic horizontal bar graph showing the sum of the measure.
2. Choose the Histogram chart in Show Me.

You will notice that Tableau has created a bin for the measure, which is now placed in the Columns field. It has also changed the measure from Sum to Count and moved it to Rows.

You might wish to understand better what is going on with the data in your chart. In this case, you can still manually create the chart.

Create a histogram without using Show Me by following the steps below:

1. Right click on the Measure you want to graph in the histogram. In this example, we will use Apartment Prices.
2. Click Create > Bins



3. A pop-up window to edit bins will appear, click OK. Instructions on editing the bin size is explained in the next section.



4. Drag the new bin to Columns
5. Right click on the pillA pill is the capsule that appears in the rows or columns field as a label for a dimension or measure.ⁱ for the bin and select Continuous



6. Drag the corresponding Measure of the bin to Rows. For example, the Apartment Rentals measure, not the bin.
7. Right click on the pill for the Measure and select Count

You’ve now achieved the same chart manually!

How to edit histogram bin size in Tableau

To edit the size of the histogram bins follow these steps:

1. Right click on the bin in the left hand data pane. In this example, we will use the House Prices (bin).
2. Select Edit
3. This will prompt the editing window where you will see Size of bins. Clicking onto the drop-down will show you different choices such as creating a parameter or entering a value. Creating a parameter will allow you to customize the minimum and maximum range of values and step size of bins according to specific questions the user has for the data. However, for this tutorial we will just be adjusting the size of bins.



4. Enter the value for the size of the bin here.

Your bins are now adjusted to a customized size!

The following steps are based on Excel version 2016 + .

1. Choose a numerical column of data that you want to analyze for the histogram, then select the column by highlighting all the cells.
2. Once the numerical data column is selected, click on the Insert tab.
3. Then click on the Statistical chart.
4. Select histogram chart.

Excel will automatically create bins from the data.

Follow the steps below to adjust the bin size:

1. Right click on the bin data series and select Format Data Series.
2. Click the Bins dropdown menu and select Bin width.



3. In the Bin width field, type the value number you would like the bin size to display as. Alternatively, the drop-down menu allows you to choose the number of bins as well.

1. Once the numerical data column is selected, click Insert > Chart.
2. An automatic chart will appear, then navigate to the Chart Editor and select the drop-down menu under Chart Type.



3. Scroll down to Other > click Histogram chart.

To edit the histogram bins in Google Sheets, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the Customize tab > Histogram
2. Click into the field under Bucket size.



3. Type into the field the number for the bucket size that you would like represented in the histogram. There are preset bucket sizes but these are too small for the example excel sheet data. Try typing in 200 for the bucket size for Apartment Rentals data.