Tableau Desktop Help and Get Started tutorial

What it is

Tableau Help is the official documentation for Tableau Desktop and the web authoring tools. It includes a guided Get Started tutorial that walks you from connecting to data to building a dashboard and a story, and detailed reference pages for every feature: data sources and relationships, dimensions and measures, filters and the order of operations, calculated fields, table calculations, level of detail (LOD) expressions, dashboards and actions.

Is it worth your time?

Yes. Video courses are pleasant, but when a number in your view is wrong, the answer is almost always in the docs: which filter runs first, how a table calculation is addressed, or why a FIXED LOD ignores a dimension filter. The pages on calculations and on Tableau's order of operations are worth reading in full once you have built a few views.

Where to start

1. The Get Started tutorial, using the sample Superstore data it provides. It takes a few hours.
2. "Get Started with Calculations in Tableau" and the pages on the three kinds of calculation: basic, LOD and table calculations.
3. The order of operations page, before you add context filters or LOD expressions to a dashboard.
4. Dashboard and actions pages when you build your first interactive dashboard.

How it fits with Tableau Public

Everything in the help applies to Tableau Desktop Public Edition, the free version, except features that need a server or paid data connectors. Build what you read about in Tableau Public and publish your practice pieces (with public data only).

Prerequisites

Comfort with spreadsheets and the idea of a table with rows and columns. SQL helps when you reach joins and relationships.

Free and paid

The docs and tutorial are free. Tableau and its partners also sell eLearning and instructor-led courses, and Tableau offers paid certifications; none are needed to become productive.

Common questions

Is Tableau's older free training video library still there? Tableau has offered free training videos on tableau.com for years; the help docs are the more complete, up-to-date reference either way.

Which version should I read? The "current" docs match the latest release, which is what Tableau Public uses.