What’s the difference between the Public version and the Desktop version of Tableau?

First of all, Tableau Public is a free tool. It’s easy to get started with Tableau when you sign up for a free account. Note that all of your data and visualization are available to anyone who has access to the Internet. It’s wide open. If your working with confidential data, don’t save your work to Tableau Public. Tableau Public is a great place to get started with learning Tableau.

To create an account at Tableau Public, go to public.tableau.com.

Tableau Public could mean two things. It might mean the community website or the downloadable software. Regarding the software, we can download the Tableau Desktop Public edition (see screenshots below) for free and use this application on our computer. However, when you wish to save your work, you cannot save it locally, you must save it up on the public website (after you create an account). As long as your data is not confidential, this works fine. It’s a great way to learn and it’s what I do.

When you run the download for Tableau Desktop Public Edition for 2023.3, you’ll see something like the following screenshot. Click to enlarge it.

If you haven’t already done so, create an account online at Tableau Public. With the free Public version, all of your charts will be stored on the public (wide open for all eyes) website. If you are okay with that, go ahead.

Here’s an article called Tableau Desktop Vs Tableau Public from the Rigor Data Solutions website.

Learn with Books

There is a Tableau book called Tableau Desktop Cookbook by Lorna Brown published by O’Reilly in 2021. Below is a screenshot of my version (very slightly modified) of her exercise 3.7 shown in Tableau Public Desktop. Note that her book is not the Public version.

Learn with YouTube

Here is a short video called Tableau Public Data Visualization | Tableau Desktop For Free | Data Visualisation Software by Jellyman Education. This video is about 7 minutes long.