Getting Started with Power BI Desktop
Creating your first project, understanding the Power BI interface, and exploring basic functionalities
Creating Your First Project in Power BI
In this section, you’ll learn how to create your first Power BI project, understand the interface, and explore some basic functionalities to help you get started with data visualization and analysis. To start your first project in Power BI, follow these simple steps to connect to data, create visualizations, and build a meaningful report.
Click the link below, an excel file will open in your browser, click file section, click Download then Microsoft Excel to download the Countries Population dataset. Countries Population
Step 1: Get data and Connect with Power BI
1. Open Power BI Desktop from your computer. On the home screen, click on “Get data” from the Home ribbon.
2. A dialog box will appear with multiple data source options. Select a data source (e.g., Excel), and click Connect.
3. Choose your file, and click Open.
Step 2: Load and Prepare Data
1. The Navigator window will display available tables or sheets from your selected data source. Select the tables you need
2. Click Load to import data or Transform Data to open the Power Query Editor for cleaning.
Step 3: Clean and Transform Data
• In the Power Query Editor, perform various data preparation tasks:
1. Use the first row as header.
2. Remove unnecessary rows or columns, select the row with errors and click Remove rows then select Remove errors.
• once done, click close & apply to load the transformed data
And here we can see that how we can clean and transform our data using power BI power query editor:
Step 4: Create Visualizations
1. In the Report View, Drag and drop a visualization (e.g., bar chart, line chart) from the Visualizations pane.
2. Drag fields from the Fields pane to the visualization’s fields (e.g., Values, Axis).
Step 5: Save Your Report
• Click File > Save As to save your Power BI project with a .pbix extension.
Understanding the Power BI Interface
1. Home Ribbon: Contains options for importing data, saving your project, and publishing reports.
2. Report View: The main canvas where you design and build your visual reports.
3. Data View: Displays your raw data in table format, allowing you to examine and edit it directly.
4. Model View: Provides a visual representation of the data model, where you can manage relationships between different tables.
5. Fields Pane: Lists all the tables and columns that have been loaded into your project.
6. Visualizations Pane: Contains different chart types and visual elements that you can add to your report.
7. Filters Pane: Allows you to apply filters to your data to control what is shown in your visualizations.
