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Install Instructions. Download the version of Power BI Desktop that matches the architecture (x86 or x64) of your Windows OS. Run the EXE installer and follow the setup steps. Back To Top. Microsoft Power BI Desktop is built for the analyst. It combines state-of-the-art interactive visualizations, with industry-leading data query and modeling ...
- Overview
- How Power BI Desktop works
- Install and run Power BI Desktop
- Connect to data
- Shape data
- Combine data
- Build reports
- Share your work
- Considerations and limitations
- Related content
APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service
Welcome to the getting started guide for Power BI Desktop. This tour shows you how Power BI Desktop works, what it can do, and how to build robust data models and amazing reports to amplify your business intelligence.
For a quick overview of how Power BI Desktop works and how to use it, you can scan the screens in this guide in just a few minutes. For a more thorough understanding, you can read through each section, perform the steps, and create your own Power BI Desktop file to post on the Power BI service and share with others.
You can also watch the Getting Started with the Power BI Desktop video, and download the Financial Sample Excel workbook to follow along with the video.
Important
You can get the most recent version of Power BI Desktop from the Windows Store, or as a single executable containing all supported languages that you download and install on your computer.
With Power BI Desktop, you can:
1.Connect to data, including multiple data sources.
2.Shape the data with queries that build insightful, compelling data models.
3.Use the data models to create visualizations and reports.
4.Share your report files for others to leverage, build upon, and share. You can share Power BI Desktop .pbix files like any other files, but the most compelling method is to upload them to the Power BI service.
Power BI Desktop integrates proven Microsoft query engine, data modeling, and visualization technologies. Data analysts and others can create collections of queries, data connections, models, and reports, and easily share them with others. Through the combination of Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service, new insights from the world of data are easier to model, build, share, and extend.
To download Power BI Desktop, go to the Power BI Desktop download page and select Download Free. Or for download options, select See download or language options.
You can also download Power BI Desktop from the Power BI service. Select the Download icon in the top menu bar, and then select Power BI Desktop.
On the Microsoft Store page, select Get, and follow the prompts to install Power BI Desktop on your computer. Start Power BI Desktop from the Windows Start menu or from the icon in the Windows taskbar.
The first time Power BI Desktop starts, it displays the Welcome screen.
From the Welcome screen, you can Get data, see Recent sources, open recent reports, Open other reports, or select other links. Select the close icon to close the Welcome screen.
Along the left side of Power BI Desktop are icons for the three Power BI Desktop views: Report, Data, and Model, from top to bottom. The current view is indicated by the yellow bar along the left, and you can change views by selecting any of the icons.
With Power BI Desktop installed, you're ready to connect to the ever-expanding world of data. To see the many types of data sources available, select Get Data > More in the Power BI Desktop Home tab, and in the Get Data window, scroll through the list of All data sources. In this quick tour, you connect to a couple of different Web data sources.
Imagine you're a data analyst working for a sunglasses retailer. You want to help your client target sunglasses sales where the sun shines most frequently. So you might want to find some information on the web about sunny locations.
On the Power BI Desktop Home tab, select Get Data > Web to connect to a web data source.
In the From Web dialog box, paste an address about sunny locations into the URL field, and select OK.
If prompted, on the Access Web Content screen, select Connect to use anonymous access.
The query functionality of Power BI Desktop goes to work and contacts the web resource. The Navigator window returns what it found on the web page, in this case an HTML table called Ranking of best and worst states for retirement, and five other suggested tables. You're interested in the HTML table, so select it to see a preview.
Now that you're connected to a data source, you can adjust the data to meet your needs. To shape data, you provide Power Query Editor with step-by-step instructions for adjusting the data while loading and presenting it. Shaping doesn't affect the original data source, only this particular view of the data.
Shaping can mean transforming the data, such as renaming columns or tables, removing rows or columns, or changing data types. Power Query Editor captures these steps sequentially under Applied Steps in the Query Settings pane. Each time this query connects to the data source, those steps are carried out, so the data is always shaped the way you specify. This process occurs when you use the query in Power BI Desktop, or when anyone uses your shared query, such as in the Power BI service.
Notice that the Applied Steps in Query Settings already contain a few steps. You can select each step to see its effect in the Power Query Editor. First, you specified a web source, and then you previewed the table in the Navigator window. In the third step, Changed type, Power BI recognized whole number data when importing it, and automatically changed the original web Text data type to Whole numbers.
If you need to change a data type, select the column or columns to change. Hold down the Shift key to select several adjacent columns, or Ctrl to select non-adjacent columns. Either right-click a column header, select Change Type, and choose a new data type from the menu, or drop down the list next to Data Type in the Transform group of the Home tab, and select a new data type.
You can now apply your own changes and transformations to the data and see them in Applied Steps.
For example, for sunglasses sales you're most interested in the weather ranking, so you decide to sort the table by the Weather column instead of by Overall rank. Drop down the arrow next to the Weather header, and select Sort ascending. The data now appears sorted by weather ranking, and the step Sorted Rows appears in Applied Steps.
The data about various states is interesting, and will be useful for building additional analysis efforts and queries. But there's one problem: most data out there uses two-letter abbreviations for state codes, not the full names of the states. To use that data, you need some way to associate your state names with their abbreviations.
You're in luck. Another public data source does just that, but the data will need a fair amount of shaping before you can combine it with your sunglass table.
To import the state abbreviations data into Power Query Editor, select New Source > Web from the New Query group on the Home tab of the ribbon.
In the From Web dialog box, enter the URL for the state abbreviations site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_abbreviations.
In the Navigator window, select the table Codes and abbreviations for U.S. states, federal district, territories, and other regions, and then select OK. The table opens in Power Query Editor.
Remove all columns except for Name and status of region, Name and status of region, and ANSI. To keep only these columns, hold down Ctrl and select the columns. Then, either right-click one of the column headers and select Remove Other Columns, or, from the Manage Columns group of the Home tab, select Remove Other Columns.
In Power BI Desktop Report view, you can build visualizations and reports. The Report view has six main areas:
1.The ribbon at the top, which displays common tasks associated with reports and visualizations.
2.The canvas area in the middle, where you create and arrange visualizations.
3.The pages tab area at the bottom, which lets you select or add report pages.
4.The Filters pane, where you can filter data visualizations.
5.The Visualizations pane, where you can add, change, or customize visualizations, and apply drillthrough.
Now that you have a Power BI Desktop report, you can share it with others. There are a few ways to share your work. You can distribute the report .pbix file like any other file, you can upload the .pbix file from the Power BI service, or you can publish directly from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI service. You must have a Power BI account to be able to publish or upload reports to Power BI service.
To publish to the Power BI service from Power BI Desktop, from the Home tab of the ribbon, select Publish.
You might be prompted to sign in to Power BI, or to select a destination.
When the publish process is complete, you see the following dialog:
When you select the link to open the report in Power BI, your report opens in your Power BI site under My workspace > Reports.
Another way to share your work is to load it from within the Power BI service. Go to https://app.powerbi.com to open Power BI in a browser. On your Power BI Home page, select Get data at lower left to start the process of loading your Power BI Desktop report.
•Power BI Desktop is updated and released on a monthly basis, incorporating customer feedback and new features. Only the most recent version of Power BI Desktop is supported. If you contact support for Power BI Desktop, you'll be asked to upgrade to the most recent version.
•For data and reporting that must remain on-premises, there's a separate and specialized version of Power BI called Power BI Report Server. Power BI Report Server uses a separate and specialized version of Power BI Desktop called Power BI Desktop for Power BI Report Server, which updates three times a year. This article describes standard Power BI Desktop.
Power BI Desktop supports connecting to a diagnostics port. The diagnostics port allows other tools to connect to and perform traces for diagnostic purposes. When you're using the diagnostics port, making any changes to the model isn't supported. Changes to the model may lead to corruption and data loss.
For more information on the many capabilities of Power BI Desktop, check out the following resources:
•Query overview in Power BI Desktop
•Data sources in Power BI Desktop
•Connect to data in Power BI Desktop
•Tutorial: Shape and combine data with Power BI Desktop
On the computer where you downloaded the Power BI Desktop installer, install the latest version of the WiX Toolset. Open a command-line window as an administrator and navigate to the folder where you installed WiX Toolset. Run the following command: Dark.exe <path to Power BI Desktop installer> -x <output folder>.
Welcome to Day 2 of our 100-day Power BI series! In this video, we'll guide you through the process of downloading and installing Power BI Desktop. Follow th...
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Power BI Report Builder. Create paginated reports to print or share with an experience familiar to countless report authors. Download. Download the latest versions of Power BI from Microsoft Power Platform. Create insightful reports, dashboards, and more with Power BI.
Sep 25, 2017 · Free. Get. Power BI Desktop puts visual analytics at your fingertips. With this powerful authoring tool, you can create interactive data visualizations and reports. Connect, mash up and model, and visualize your data. Place visuals exactly where you want them, analyze and explore your data, and share content with your team by publishing to the ...
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