OK this may be a well known shortcut in Tableau that this particular data geek has missed during the last 5 years, but now I have found it I am one happy bunny!
The discovery came on my flight back from an awesome week in Australia with Fi Gordon, I was designing a new Olympic Swimming viz (not ready for public eyes yet!) and needed to colour multiple Measure Names.
I went about my usual business, dropping Measure Names onto colour and then started editing the colours, and this is where my revelation happened. Usually I would click on a Measure or Dimension and assign a colour using a standard or custom colour palette. This time, thanks to my mid flight slumber, I accidentally double clicked on the coloured square next to the Measure Name in the edit colour window (normally I would click the label of the Measure Name).
To my surprise the Tableau 'select a colour' window popped up! I could pick a colour, pick a screen colour, or set a Hex value, individually for each Measure Name.
Now I know this is probably common knowledge, but maybe, just maybe, if I have only found this feature, there may be a few others who may appreciate this cheeky little colour shortcut. If you are setting colours for one off Measure Names this hopefully will save you some time, saving you from having to create custom colour palettes in your preference file.
And now time for some sleep on the second leg of the journey home!