What is a Tableau workbook?

A Tableau workbook is the main file you create and save your work in when using Tableau Desktop. It's the container that holds everything related to one analysis project.

• One or more worksheets, each showing a single view or chart.
• Dashboards, which combine multiple worksheets into one interactive screen.
• Stories, which sequence dashboards and worksheets into a guided narrative.
• Data connections, calculated fields, parameters, and formatting all saved together in the same file.

A workbook is saved with either a .twb extension (a lightweight XML file that just references the data source) or a .twbx extension (a packaged workbook that bundles the data extract and any local files together, making it easy to share).

Because everything lives in one file, opening a workbook gives you the full picture of an analysis: the raw connections, every worksheet built on top of them, and the dashboards and stories assembled from those worksheets.