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title: Defining Unique Values
collection: tableau
version: next
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/tableau/next/en-us/pro/desktop/buildmanual_multidimensional_uniquevalues.md
canonical_url: https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/pro/desktop/en-us/buildmanual_multidimensional_uniquevalues.htm
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content_type: documentation
content_hash: b22ea4cb75aab4af6dc61d3cd151517351905e25abb4b2e003c11afb26a90fa9
description: Understand how Tableau distinguishes duplicate member names in cube data sources by qualification.
---
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# Defining Unique Values

**Note**: The following applies only to certain multidimensional (cube) data sources.

Sometimes, when you are building views in Tableau, a field will have multiple members with the same name. For example, you may have a view showing the average profit by month over several years. The month February appears multiple times (once for each year).

![The month February appears twice on a line chart, once for each year.](/tableau/next/en-us/pro/desktop/en-us/Img/wwd_uniquevalues1.png)

While the name, February, is repeated, each instance of February can either be considered similar or unique. If you consider them similar, they will appear in the same column if you decided to move the Year field to the Color. However, if you consider them unique, they will be treated as two different values.

![Two line charts, one with overlapping lines and non-unique month values, another with separate lines and unique month values.](/tableau/next/en-us/pro/desktop/en-us/Img/unique_values3.png)

It is generally okay to consider repeated names within date and time fields (like in the previous example) similar but if there are repeated names in the Customer Name field, you won't want to consider the two customers as the same person.

To define how you want Tableau to determine whether repeated values are unique, right-click (control-click on Mac) on the dimension in the Data pane and select one of the following on the Unique Values context menu:

- By Key: each member is considered unique based on the key given to it by the system administrator when the database is set up. Members with the same name but different keys are treated as unique values.
- By Name: each member is considered unique based on the member name. Members with the same name (regardless of their keys) are treated as if they are the same.

By default, unique date and time values are determined by name and all other values are determined by key.