Import­ing Data

Fig­ure 1: Wel­come screen when open­ing new file

When first open­ing PBI you will be greet­ed with this screen. You can select recent files to open on the left, or choose “Get Data” to import new data and start a new file.

Fig­ure 2: Get Data win­dow

For import­ing Excel data, you will be prompt­ed to select sheets or tables after select­ing the .xlsx file. If your Excel file has for­mat­ted tables, each table shows up as a selec­table option inde­pen­dent of the sheet it’s in. Be aware that select­ing both a sheet and a table with­in the sheet can cre­ate dupli­cate data sets in PBI and may cause con­fu­sion lat­er.

Fig­ure 3: Choos­ing a table or sheet from Excel data

You can choose to imme­di­ate­ly load the data, or trans­form the data first. Load­ing the data imme­di­ate­ly allows you to start mak­ing visu­als with it, and Trans­form Data brings up the Pow­er Query Edi­tor.

Fig­ure 4: Load/Transform Data/Cancel, locat­ed at the bot­tom right of the pop-up win­dow

For a more detailed expla­na­tion around loading/transforming data, see “Lab 1 — Access­ing and Prepar­ing Data A4.pdf” from Microsoft’s Dash­board in a Day work­shop.

M vs DAX

Pow­er BI has two lan­guages that are used to set up and manip­u­late data. It seems like DAX is used every­where, except for the Pow­er Query Edi­tor. The Query Edi­tor uses M (quick tour, overview).