Video |

Tableau | Data visualisation | Productivity

Data pane search operators

A neat little 2020.3 hack: type m: in the search pane and Tableau instantly narrows your fields down to just the measures.

Tim Ngwena •12 August 2020 •1 min read •2 min watch •973

Watch on YouTube

In Tableau 2020.3 you can add search operators to the data pane search to filter by field type
Typing m: returns only measures, helping cut down the field list quickly
The filter icon reveals operators C, D, M and F for calculations, dimensions, searches (measures) and comments
If you've already typed a term, you can still hit the filter icon and Tableau prepends the operator to your existing search

0:00Hey, it's Tim here. And in 2020.3, Tableau

0:05have added some great quality of life

0:07improvements

0:08to the search pane inside of the data pane.

0:10That's a bit of a tongue twister, but you

0:11'll

0:11see what I mean. If I head over to desktop

0:14here, you'll see here on the very top left

0:16hand side, I'm just highlighting it now,

0:18you can see there's a search pane. And if I

0:20just

0:20start typing the term profit into that, you

0:23'll see that it essentially returns all the

0:25fields

0:26that have the term profit within them. The

0:28new feature in 2020.3 is I can actually add

0:32a search operator to this search query here

0:34. In this case, I'm going to type in m colon

0:37,

0:37and you can see that it just returns the

0:40measures. So it helps cut the different

0:42fields down

0:43by field type. So if I go ahead and click

0:45this filter icon, you can actually see

0:47those

0:48search parameters here as well. So C, D, M,

0:51and F, each correlating to calculations,

0:54dimensions,

0:55searches, and comments. Now, the other

0:58thing to bear in mind is if I just type in

1:00a term

1:00and I forget to type it in in advance, okay

1:03, and I hit the space there, so I only got

1:05three

1:05items. But if I remove that space and I go

1:07back to having my five items, I can still

1:09hit this filter icon, hit an M, and Tableau

1:12will prepend that search operator to the

1:15particular

1:16search. So you can still do it even after

1:18you've typed something. So it's actually a

1:20really nice sort of hack to basically

1:22search for something, head to the filter

1:24pane, hit

1:24the thing you want, and then you've

1:26narrowed the list down really, really

1:28quickly. If you've

1:29enjoyed this video, you know what to do,

1:31hit the like button. If you haven't, there

1:33's a

1:33button for you there as well. But I'd

1:35rather you tell me what kind of content you

1:36'd like

1:37to see in the comments below, and I'll try

1:39and get to that very, very soon. Thanks for

1:41watching, and I'll catch you in the next

1:43video, hopefully about 2020.3, or check out

1:46many

1:46of the other videos on my channel that

1:48touch on lots and lots of topics in the

1:50Tableau

Rollup

Tableau's data pane search lets you add a search operator so you filter the field list by type as well as by name, which speeds up finding the field you need in a wide data source.

This is a small quality-of-life feature added to the data pane search in Tableau 2020.3. It works on the search box in the top left of the data pane in Desktop.

The Breakdown

Search the data pane as normal 0:00

Typing a term into the data pane search box returns every field whose name contains that term, regardless of whether it's a dimension, measure, calculation or comment.
Add a type operator to narrow results 0:20

Typing m: into the search box returns only measures. This lets you cut a long field list down by type rather than just by name match.
Find the full set of operators via the filter icon 0:40

Clicking the filter icon next to the search box shows the available operators: C, D, M and F, for calculations, dimensions, searches (measures) and comments. Use whichever matches the field type you're after.
Operator still applies if you search first 0:58

If you've already typed a search term and only then realise you want to filter by type, you don't need to retype anything: click the filter icon and pick an operator, and Tableau prepends it to your existing search text automatically.

Use It When

Reach for this when you're working in a data source with a large number of fields and want to jump straight to, say, all the measures or all the calculations matching a term, instead of scrolling and scanning by eye.

How this Rollup was made provenance & method

A Rollup is drafted by AI from the video's transcript, then reviewed and edited by Tim. Everything used to produce this one is listed below — the model, the exact prompt, and the source video — so the process is transparent and reproducible.

Transcription: On-device — NVIDIA Parakeet v3 for recent videos, OpenAI Whisper large-v3 for earlier ones. The transcript never leaves the machine or gets published.
Drafting: Claude Sonnet 5 in the cloud, from that transcript.
Prompt: The exact Rollup prompt (v2) — the full system prompt, unedited.
Source video: Watch on YouTube
Drafted: 5 July 2026 at 09:38
Reviewed & edited: 5 July 2026 at 09:41 · by Tim Ngwena

Model + prompt + video is everything you'd need to recreate a Rollup like this yourself. The one thing we don't share is the transcript.

Rights. The video and its transcript are the property of TN Media Ltd. Unauthorised use or download is prohibited. © TN Media Ltd.