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Tableau | Data visualisation | Tool strategy | Industry trends

A free version of Tableau to take on Power BI Desktop Edition

Tableau Public can now save locally, making it a genuinely usable free way to learn and play with Tableau.

Tim Ngwena •5 May 2024 •1 min read •4 min watch •5.6K

Part ofWhat's new in Tableau 2024.2

Watch on YouTube

Tableau Public Desktop Edition can now save workbooks locally to your machine, not just to the Tableau Public website.
The old toolbar save button still publishes to Tableau Public online; to save locally you must use File > Save or Save As.
Database connections remain unavailable in Tableau Public, but static files like Excel, text, JSON, PDF, spatial and statistical files all work.
Web data connectors, Google Drive and OData are the only live connection options.
The current Mac build is not yet Apple Silicon native, so a native version is expected with the 24.2 release.

0:00Hey it's him here.

0:01Tableau desktop now has a free version that allows you to save to your desktop.

0:06Let me explain.

0:07Let's get stuck with it.

0:08Okay, so four days ago at Tableau Conference

0:11Ryan Ate during the keynote announced that Tableau Public Desktop Edition would be getting the ability to save locally, and Tableau have delivered on that promise almost immediately with a patch update to 24.

0:231.

0:24Incrementing it to 24.

0:261.

0:272.

0:27You can actually see that pop-up here inside of Tableau Public.

0:30Over on the right hand side, there's a nice big blue pop-up telling you, hey, you can now save locally.

0:36What this essentially means is that previously with Tableau Public, what you had to do was save up to Tableau Public.

0:42Essentially, you couldn't save a file to your sort of desktop or to a folder on your machine.

0:47And that kind of meant it was difficult to really get away with using Tableau Public in a work setting because Tableau Public was never really meant for an enterprise setting.

0:55And now that you can save locally, it means you kind of have a lot of room to play with and learn Tableau.

1:01And that's really fundamentally what they've done here.

1:03They've sort of incrementally added this capability so Tableau Public can really be the version

1:08that everyone uses to be familiar with Tableau.

1:10It still has a limitation with databases.

1:12You can't connect to databases.

1:14You can see here the list of databases is is basically non-existent.

1:17The only thing you'll be able to connect to are web data connectors, Google Drive and OData.

1:22That's essentially it.

1:23But static files on your machine will be fine.

1:25Microsoft Excel, Textfile, JSON, PDF, Spatial, and Statistical Files, all absolutely fine.

1:31So

1:31That's what you can do.

1:32Let me just show you this feature working because there is one gotcha that I that that made me kind of wonder where is this feature?

1:37So let me just show you this.

1:38I'll connect to a data source very, very quickly so you can see this capability.

1:42Here I am in Excel, sorry, in Tableau.

1:46I've downloaded a Superstore.

1:48I've opened it up, I've opened the orders table.

1:51Gone into sheet one.

1:52We're gonna build the fastest chart we can build.

1:54I'm freezing because I can't find segment.

1:56Let's go get cells and columns and boom.

1:58We'll make this vertical by rotating it.

2:00And voila, we have a chart.

2:01Now I want to save this.

2:03The first thing I did was I hit the save button because of course you do.

2:06That's what I've always done with Tableau Public.

2:08Expecting to see the save option here, it doesn't come up here.

2:11Actually what happens is that button still connects to Tableau Public, the website version.

2:17If I close that and instead we go to the file menu, which I'll pop up here at the top, you'll see we now have two options, save and save as.

2:25If I go ahead and hit save,

2:27Then this will allow me to save this to my desktop and we can pretty much go ahead and save that.

2:32And as soon as we do that, it will save that to my machine.

2:35So that's it.

2:36We're done.

2:37That's essentially all we need to do.

2:38It's super simple.

2:39I actually got the workbook here on my desktop.

2:41Let me show you that it's actually on my desktop.

2:43What I'm gonna have to do is swipe over out of the full screen experience.

2:46and bring over my desktop, you can see the file is right there.

2:49And if you go ahead and open this, you can open it with Tableau Public and you're pretty much good to go.

2:54I've also got the Apple Silicon version on my machine.

2:57And one detail about that is that because this Tableau Public edition is coming out before 24.

3:032, this version of Tableau Public on a Mac is not using the Apple Silicon native version.

3:09So what I'm expecting

3:10is with the next release of 24.

3:122, the public edition will get an Apple Silicon variant with the save local version of Tableau Public as well.

3:19So that's super good to hear.

3:20Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.

Rollup

Tableau Public Desktop Edition can now save workbooks locally instead of only publishing to the Tableau Public website, which makes it a genuinely usable free way to learn and practise Tableau outside a work environment.

This follows an announcement at Tableau Conference that was delivered almost immediately as a patch, taking Tableau Public to version 24.1.2. I walk through what changed and demonstrate the save behaviour, including a gotcha with the existing save button.

The Breakdown

The announcement and quick patch 0:00

The ability to save locally was announced at Tableau Conference and shipped almost immediately in a patch update to version 24.1.2, which you'll see flagged in a pop-up inside Tableau Public itself.
Why this matters 0:43

Previously Tableau Public could only save up to the Tableau Public website, which made it impractical for anything beyond public, shareable work. Local saving means you now have room to use it freely for learning and experimenting with Tableau without that restriction.
What you still can't connect to 1:01

Database connections remain unavailable in Tableau Public; the only live connection options are web data connectors, Google Drive and OData. Static files — Excel, text, JSON, PDF, spatial and statistical files — all work fine, so build your practice files around those rather than databases.
Building a quick chart to test it 1:43

I connect to a static data source, open a sheet and build a simple chart just to have something to save — the point is any static-file workflow will get you to the same save step.
The save button gotcha 2:00

Clicking the existing toolbar save button still publishes to the Tableau Public website, not your local machine — this hasn't changed and can catch you out if you assume it now saves locally.
Saving locally the right way 2:25

To save to your desktop you must use File > Save or File > Save As from the menu, not the toolbar button. Doing this writes the workbook file directly onto your machine, and you can then reopen it locally with Tableau Public.
Mac Apple Silicon caveat 2:42

Because this update shipped ahead of the 24.2 release, the current Mac build of Tableau Public is not yet Apple Silicon native. A native Apple Silicon version is expected to arrive alongside the 24.2 release, bundled with this local-save capability.

Worth Knowing

The old save button in the toolbar still publishes to Tableau Public online — use File > Save or Save As for local saves.
Database connections are still off-limits in Tableau Public; only web data connectors, Google Drive and OData work as live connections.
The Mac version isn't Apple Silicon native yet; that's expected with the 24.2 release.

Use It When

Reach for Tableau Public Desktop Edition when you want a free, no-cost way to learn or practise Tableau outside work, using static files rather than live database connections.

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

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