Although Explore features many visualizations to help you present your query results, sometimes a simple table is the best way to present information. Tables are a great way to compare data collected over a period of time, for example:
This table was created using the Zendesk tickets dataset, using two metrics, COUNT(Tickets) and SUM(Agent replies), the column Ticket created - Quarter, and the row Ticket type. If the query doesn't show a table, use the visualization selector () to change the chart format.
Creating a table is just the start. This article shows some of the many customization options that help you present your tables in the form you need.
This article contains the following topics:
Changing the look of your table
In the chart configuration menu (), the following areas contain customization options which are particularly useful when working with tables:
Chart
The chart menu helps you to customize the text style of your table. Additionally, further options can be accessed if your table has hyperlinks. For more information about using links in tables, see Working with links in tables.
Text style options include editing the size, color, and formatting for headers, results, totals, and subtotals. If you add totals or subtotals, you can change their labels and their repetition text.
Columns
Columns are added to your table every time you add an attribute or metric. You can control how columns appear under Chart configuration > Columns.
Adding metrics to rows
By default, metrics are placed in different columns. You can list the metrics together in one column by selecting Metrics on rows.
If you've selected Metrics on rows or added an attribute on Rows, you can select Show row number to display the number of rows in your table.
Setting column width
Columns are fitted to their content and aligned automatically, unless you change these options in Columns. To input a new width and alignment for individual columns, you must deselect Fit to content and Automatic alignment.
Expanding text
If you select a column width that removes a portion of your text, you can expand your text onto additional lines by checking Allow multiline. You can set the number of lines by typing a new number in Multi-line margin.
If your text exceeds the selected number of lines, you can check Discoverable multiline. Discoverable multiline lets you expand text by clicking a Read more link.
To use discoverable multiline, on the Chart page of the chart configuration menu (), change the Text interpretation setting to HTML.
Hiding columns
In the column list, you can also select whether to show or hide columns and add an arrow to stress the direction of results. Hiding columns can be useful when you want to remove empty or unnecessary columns.
For example, in the report below the result path calculation calculates the percentage of difference based on the previous period. This causes the third column to become empty. In the image below, the column has been hidden.
You can hide columns by clicking the eye icon next to the column number.
Color options
You can customize the colors of your table in Colors. You can edit the background, header, rows, totals, subtotals, and table colors. You can choose your own colors or select from Explore's color palettes.
Sorting data in tables
You can sort the results of your table based on any of its metrics. To do this, click the heading at the top of any metrics column in the table.
You can also control the default sort order for tables in the Result manipulation () > Sorts menu.
To turn off the ability to sort, under Chart configuration > Columns, deselect Allow column sorting.
If you want to display totals at the bottom of the table, choose Result manipulation () > Totals, and then choose the setting you want.
Working with links in tables
If you're table contains links, for example to tickets from a ticket ID, more options appear in the chart configuration menu () to help you control how the links work:
Text interpretation: Choose from:
- Text only: Links are shows as text, and can't be clicked.
- Raw: Links are shown as text, but any embedded HTML text is also displayed.
- HTML: The link text is displayed. If it is contained in a valid HTML link, the link will be clickable.
If you chose HTML, the following additional options are displayed:
- Clickable URL: Enables report viewers to click the link and visit the associated URL.
- URL alias and Image URL alias: Enables you to enter text that will appear instead of the URL.
- Display image: If your URL points to an image, the image will automatically appear when a user hovers over the link. You can disable this by deselecting Display images.
For some great examples of using links in queries, see Explore recipe: Configuring clickable links to tickets.
Manipulating table results
Just like with charts, you can use result manipulations to change the data in your table. For example, you can apply a default sort order, add totals, restrict the range of results that are presented, and more.
For a full list of result manipulations, see Calculation type reference.

Copying table data to another application
Sometimes, you might want to copy the information in an Explore table to another application for example, Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Explore lets you copy and paste data from a table into the application of your choice.
To copy the contents of a table
- Position your mouse pointer over the first table cell you want to copy and hold down the left mouse button.
- Keeping the mouse button held down, drag the pointer over the cells you want to copy.
- When you have selected the cells you want to copy, release the left mouse button, then click Copy. The contents of the cells you selected are copied to your computer clipboard.
- Open your application, and paste the contents of the clipboard into it.
30 Comments
Can you please add the ability to color select individual cells in Tables? I have a Table Chart for Individual Satisfaction Scores and since I cannot choose which columns add up or give the average for, I need the ability to color the selected cells that we need to be aware of (See example chart below)
Ideally I'd be able to hide the data I do not want in the chart, but the Hide features in Explore only apply to Entire Columns or Entire Rows.
Thanks!
In some cases, I would like to be able to sort on attributes instead of metrics. For example when I create a table displaying a certain group of tickets, I want to sort them on created date rather than ticket count (since this is 1 on each row anyways). Is this possible somehow?
Hey there Lotte,
That's definitely a very good question! There are a few different sort options you're able to do for chart styled reports. I'd recommend giving the A-Z sort a try (but your report would need to be for ticket creation/creation date), by default this would pull oldest to newest, but if you'd like this changed a Z-A sort will reverse that.
If this doesn't achieve what you're looking for. Definitely let us know!
I have a simple table that shows the amount of accepted, missed and declined calls an agent has for the previous day.
I need to be able to sort the table by the agents name alphabetically to make it match up with another table I have for the total amount of tickets.
There only seems to be the option to sort the columns with data in and not the agents name. Is there any way to do this? I have tried using the result manipulation > sort but this only seems to affect the data columns rather than the agent name column.
Hi Adam,
By default the table should be displaying the agents' names in alphabetical order. It could be that one of your filters is affecting the order the names are appearing in.
I'll send you a ticket so we can have a closer look!
My organization has a fiscal year of Oct to Sept. I'm generally asked to report by fiscal year. I'm able to set that date range but but is there a way to reorder the columns in a chart that is showing by month so that is it Oct to Sept instead of Jan to Dec? Just to avoid confusion...
I'm using Ticket Created - Month
Hi Jessica,
You'll just want to add the attribute 'Ticket created - Year' to your columns, then the table should be ordered from October - September.
Let me know how you go!
Hi,

How do I make visible attributes values on each row in the table (for Month and Date Ticket Solved in my case)? I know that putting Ticket ID as a first column will do this, but I want to keep it on 3rd one.
Hey Andrei,
I did some testing on my end and it looks like there's no way to change how this displays at this time. The attribute will be grouped by month instead of showing that month for each individual row. I'm happy to pass this along to our Explore Product managers as product feedback so they are aware of this need.
I also encourage you to create a separate post in our Explore Product Feedback topic as this will help our PM's gauge interest in this functionality.
Appreciate you taking the time to share this with us!
Hi Brett Bowser
Thx for looking into my request! I submitted the idea too :)
Is there a way to have alternating row colors across multiple columns? Currently the "alternating rows" color option only affects a column displaying the metric. I'm hoping to improve readability of the chart, so I'd like to be able to have alternating colors across all columns.
Hello Kirsten Johnson,
In Explore the ability to have alternating row colors as you described isn't possible as the base program stands. I would recommend, however, letting our development team know via our Product Feedback forum about your request so that they can consider adding it to their roadmap for future updates.
Best regards.
Can we define a custom sorting order? In the table below, I'd like the order to be sorted by level of Severity so it'd go System Down > Critical/High > Normal/Medium > Low.
Hello John,
You can do this by creating an Ordered set and using your new ordered set on your query.
Here's some information about Ordered sets: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022184334-Organizing-values-by-groups-and-sets#topic_ssy_cnw_fv
Please can we have the ability to output the data as displayed rather than as a pivot-ready list. Insights allowed us to switch a "how" attribute from left to top (screenshot of the Insights control attached). I would like to run various reports showing data monthly for a year, which I can do as a table in Explore, but as soon as I need to work with it in Excel I need to pivot it.
David Stevenson
Hi David Stevenson, this is definitely something you should consider adding to our product feedback forum at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/360001200913
Hi guys,
Is there a way to highlight a specific column?
I have 3 types of tickets - All/Invalid/Clean and I want the "Clean" column to be highlighted in a different color for better readability, see here: https://drops.memsource.com/2NuXzoor
Thank you.
Mirek
Hello Mirek Kokes,
You should be able to accomplish this, no problem. I've linked an article that goes into detail on how to achieve this in your report.
Changing the format of results
Best regards.
Hi I would like to know how to change metric values like 1 and 0 to text like "good" and "Bad" for a CSAT report I am trying to replicate from Insights.
Hi Parrish Chamberlin thanks for the question.
As a starting point, you could create a standard calculated attribute with a formula something like:
IF ([Ticket satisfaction rating]="Bad") THEN "Bad"
ELIF ([Ticket satisfaction rating]="Good") THEN "Good" ENDIF
That should return the basics of what you're looking for. I hope this helps!
Hi there, when I export a table from a Dashboard to Excel that has a clickable link, the html isn't rendering in Excel. It's just showing the HTML script. Is there a simple fix I can apply to this so that the links appear as clickable from Excel?
Hey Jonathan,
I did some digging and it looks like this is expected behavior. It looks like we have a product feedback post related to what you're looking for here: Export report with Clickable Links?
I recommend upvoting that post and providing your feedback there for our Product Managers to review.
Thanks!
I would like to sort a table by agent names for ticket events. I used the agent name by ticket event and it doesn't show the results in an alphabetical order. I just saw that another user had the same issue but there wasn't any real answer on the question.
I used in adition a filter that excludes specific events but this shouldn't be the reason why I can't sort by agent names.
Hi,
If I create a table with SLA data's, could it be possible to assign a colour depending on the values ?
I'm trying to add this setting in Chart > Text color in order to have a better view on the SLA's scores
Thank's
Heya Rob Stack,
The tables have changed:
How do you take the Total sum of those years back to the left? It was like this previously and now it's all gone to the right. And I noticed this change on all the reports built
Regardless of the sorting method A - Z , Z - A, or Ascending / Descending, it does't change the last column which when originaly set as z - a had the total on the left.
Just to give you an example. This is how I had it before:
This is weekly, but built on the same rules as the other query and looking at it now I have to scroll all the way to the right to get the total:
So somethings changed on your end which is affecting what it looks like on my end and I can't get it to be on the the left. (Total Sum | Most recent Week | Previous Week | Week Before etc )
Hi Bart, hope all is well. I'm not aware of any changes that were made to the table functionality but clearly somethings happened. I think the best thing I can do here is open a ticket on your behalf so that we can investigate what's happening. Based on the results, I'll update the docs if necessary.
We use Explore to create Monthly Service reports for our customers, where we list out tickets raised during the period and another list of any outstanding, open tickets. Because the lists constantly vary in size, it is complete ball-ache to have to adjust the rest of the report to "fit". It also removes our ability to schedule the reports because we always have to manually adjust them first.
All that is needed is for the widget that the table sits on to dynamically grow with the table...
I can see that this was raised back in January 2019... https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360029386454-Make-Reports-Resize-Dynamically?page=1#community_comment_360014118313
Is this likely to be done? It really does remove my ability to use Explore for the one thing we really use it for.
Something has changed recently with table behavior. Tables won't automatically add rows any more, and I'm really annoyed!
Since I have been using Guide, tables can be automatically expanded (adding extra rows) like any other spreadsheet or table program, by simply pressing Tab in the final column of the last row.
Starting earlier this month (September 2020) when I do that I now get an error that causes me to reload Guide and lose everything since I last saved. Fortunately I've been around long enough to remember the "save early, save often" mantra before we had clouds or applications that automatically backup your work.
Still, it's annoying to have to stop at the end of the row and go to the table tool and tell it to add another row or two or three before continuing to add data to the table.
Can anyone verify if this is behavior they have experienced? In other words--is this happening globally in Guide installations? If it is, then I hope Zendesk will fix it. If it's only happening in our installation, then I'll go yell at my web developers and designers to find out what they've changed that is causing the error.
Hey Kenneth,
The rest of the conversation and this article are all about Explore reports; I hate to ask you to make more effort, but for the sake of keeping conversations orderly, could you post your question in the Guide Q&A topic in the community? I'm looking into this issue and hope to have an answer to share with you in the next day or two.
Hello Greg Vowles,
I checked with our product team, and currently, this feature request is not our roadmap. I've shared this with our product team, but I would still recommend posting your use case in our product feedback forum so others can weigh in on this topic.
Best regards.
Please sign in to leave a comment.