Qlik offers a free version of QlikView for personal use. QlikView Personal Edition is the full QlikView Desktop product and uses the same installation package. The only difference is that QlikView Personal Edition runs without a license key.
If at any point you or your organization decides to acquire a full QlikView license, this Personal Edition installation will automatically become a full QlikView Desktop without requiring any additional software and without any changes to your QlikView documents.
There are no limitations in terms of time or functionality in QlikView Personal Edition, however there are a few aspects to observe regarding the handling of QlikView documents. In QlikView Personal Edition, every document is saved with a user key that binds that file to the computer it is created on. This implies:
- QlikView Personal Edition can only open files created using that particular copy of QlikView. This means, with QlikView Personal Edition you cannot use your QlikView documents on different computers, you cannot share your QlikView documents with another unregistered user, or open a QlikView document from another user (exempted are documents specially prepared for personal use by Qlik). However, documents created in QlikView Personal Edition can be used with a licensed copy of QlikView Desktop and they can also be published on a QlikView Server.
- You cannot import an entire document layout (sheets/objects/security settings, etc. in XML format, without the data) into QlikView Personal Edition.
Should you change computers, you will not be able to open your previously created documents with QlikView Personal Edition. In this case, you can choose to recover your files. Recovering files means a new user key is generated, assigned to the old document and used for all subsequent files, not only for that particular file. After recovering a file, you can no longer use it on the computer that you created it in.
QlikView will accept 4 user key changes in a document. After that, you will get the error message “Key length has reached its maximum” and the document will not open any more. The only possibility is to recreate it from scratch.
Therefore, you should not recover QlikView documents that you did not create (from a forum or from a colleague, etc.). Doing so will use one of your remaining recovery attempts.
As a user of QlikView Personal Edition you can upgrade the software to a newer version at any time and continue working with your documents. New versions may be downloaded from the Qlik Download Site and installed on the existing computer. QlikView Personal Edition is the full QlikView Desktop product and uses the same installation package. Note that you need to be logged in as a Qlik Customer or Partner with a valid license to see the contents of the Downloads page.
Users of QlikView Personal Edition do not qualify for telephone or e-mail support from Qlik, but they can gain excellent QlikView support through our active user community, Qlik Community. All of the content is accessible to our members, but you must register to post questions in the forum, download files or sign up for training.
One of the best ways to learn about the capabilities of QlikView is through the QlikView Tutorial, which provides helpful hints like expression examples, code blocks and design advice. The Tutorial and the corresponding files can be downloaded on the Qlik Download Site. These documents are also adapted for QlikView Personal Edition.
