Create & Modify Buttons in PowerPoint for use in Tableau (Template Included)



I use a lot of custom buttons in my visualizations.  I use them for dashboard navigation, collapsible containers, links to URLs, and much more.  It gives the viz a very polished look and really provides a clean interface for my users.  I am often asked how I create these buttons and I inevitably surprise the person asking when I tell them PowerPoint. 

I’ve created several videos on how to utilize PowerPoint in correlations with Tableau visualizations (Match Made in Heaven & Background Images).  This blog post and video will focus solely on how to create buttons. 

The short video will quickly show how to create custom buttons from scratch.  However, Ken Flerlage and I tried to save you much of that work.  Together, we created 130 different custom buttons with different styles and purposes.  You can check out the Tableau Visualization here.  From the viz, you can download a PowerPoint template that includes these 130 buttons.  Just click the button at the top / left corner.  This will take you to my Google Drive.  You can download it to your local computer by going to File, Download, and choosing Microsoft PowerPoint.  If you have any issues downloading the file, please email me at flerlagek@gmail.com.

With the template, you can easily change colors, text, and images to customize buttons for your own use – and it only takes a couple of seconds.  The video tutorial will walk you through how to modify these buttons as well.

Click here or click on the image below to check out the video.  We hope to see lots of custom buttons in the near future!  Let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks!

Before I go, I'd like to quickly mention that it's important to know when to use buttons.  If you're interested, check out this UI Cheat Sheet focused solely on buttons and their usage.



Below is a quick look at all the buttons that appear in the viz and the PowerPoint template:





Kevin Flerlage, May 25, 2020













18 comments:

  1. Thank you very much for this.
    It comes in handy as I develop a dashboard for a customer making use of the apple-like alert button and need a button for the drill down to the details list.

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  2. Thank you Ken & Kevin for the awesome template. I did modify my version of this a little bit to pull in the Tableau checkmark and "x" just so that they look uniform on the buttons, but this is fantastic and we will use this in our office for sure. I have already sent it over to my developer to start using. Keep up the great tips!!

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    1. That's wonderful, Kyle! Happy to hear it.

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    2. That's exactly how we intended this to be used. Take it and make it your own!

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  3. Thank you Kevin and Ken! Happy I found your blog!

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  4. Hi Kevin & Ken thanks for sharing wonderful blog really its very helpful for me and Others.

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  5. This is so great! I plan on making a button like this to display a navigation tips overlay.

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  6. This is SO useful, I use it a lot! Thank you Kevin!!! :)

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  7. Thanks Kevin for this awesome post. This helped me save a lot of time :)

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  8. This helped me with school. Thanks!

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