Fixed Tableau Calculation -
FIXED [Dimension1], [Dimension2] : AGG([Measure])
FIXED [Customer Name] : SUM([Sales]) → This calculates total sales per customer , no matter whether you’re looking at Year, Product, or Region in your worksheet. When Should You Use FIXED? (3 Real-World Use Cases) 1. Percent of Total (by a specific group) Problem: You want to show each product’s sales as a % of Category total , even if the user filters to a specific region or year.
FIXED [Customer ID] : MIN([Order Date]) → This gives you the first order date for each customer, repeated on every transaction row. Perfect for building a “Cohort Month” field. 3. Compare Row Value to a Higher-Level Aggregate Problem: You have daily sales data. You want to compare each day’s sales to the monthly average . fixed tableau calculation
Your challenge this week: Find one dashboard where you used a table calculation for a percent-of-total. Replace it with a FIXED LOD. See the difference.
Enter the .
FIXED [Category] : SUM([Sales]) → Category total. Then create: SUM([Sales]) / [Category Total] . Now, even if you filter to East region, the denominator stays the Category total across all regions. 2. Cohort Analysis (Customer’s First Purchase Date) Problem: You want to tag each transaction with the customer’s first order date to analyze retention by cohort.
FIXED MONTH([Date]) : AVG([Sales]) → Monthly average appears on every day row. Then compute: AVG([Daily Sales]) - [Monthly Avg] . Common Pitfalls (And How to Avoid Them) | Pitfall | Why It Happens | Fix | |--------|----------------|-----| | Ignoring context filters | By default, FIXED ignores worksheet filters. | Use FIXED … : SUM([Sales]) with Add to Context on filters you want to apply. | | Slowing down performance | Computing massive FIXED aggregates on billions of rows. | Pre-aggregate in data source or use extract filters. | | Unexpected duplication | Using too many dimensions in FIXED, causing sparse results. | Keep FIXED dimensions minimal and relevant. | Percent of Total (by a specific group) Problem:
FIXED is the most powerful—and often misunderstood—calculation in Tableau. Unlike its cousins (INCLUDE and EXCLUDE), FIXED operates of your worksheet’s filters and dimensions. It says, “Compute this value at this specific level, and I don’t care what else is on the view.”
