Use the SIGN() function

Hey Tableau Community! Ever wondered what the SIGN() function does?

SIGN() is a useful little function to quickly identify values as positive or negative and can be used within calculations or simply to colour your charts! If a value is positive, it will return the value 1, and -1 for negative values.

To use it, all you need to do is wrap your measure variable in the function, then you can start using it in your charts!

For example, if I want to show Profit by Sub-category and colour the bars depending on whether they’re negative or positive, all I need to do is wrap my Profit value in the SIGN() function, and add it onto colour on the marks card as a discrete variable.

 And just like that – I’ve coloured my bars depending on the sign!

I hope you find this trick useful! If you have any Tableau related questions feel free to let me know!