# Tableau Desktop Free Edition Fact Sheet!  (Here’s What You Can & Can’t Do) #data #tableau #analytics

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2026-03-04
- **Format:** Short · 1 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy, Industry trends
- **Tools:** Tableau (cloud, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-desktop-free-edition-fact-sheet--heres-what-you-can--cant-do-data-tableau-analytics
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AUDFz6Cs4E

I walk through a Salesforce fact sheet comparing Tableau Reader, Tableau Desktop Public Edition and the new Tableau Desktop Free Edition. I explain where the Free Edition sits between the professional and public versions, and what it can and can't do.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau Desktop Free Edition sits between the professional and public editions, sharing the same privacy and security as the full version.
- You can save visualisations locally, use auto recovery, do live data refreshes locally and connect to all data sources locally.
- You can download or copy published workbooks from Tableau Cloud, but only embedded connections work — published data sources or live Server/Cloud connections won't.
- The two things you cannot do in Free Edition are publish to Tableau Public and publish to Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server.

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-desktop-free-edition-fact-sheet--heres-what-you-can--cant-do-data-tableau-analytics

---
just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena