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How to Use Power BI Tool

Cody Schneider••8 min read

Turning a folder full of messy data into a clean, interactive report can feel like a great idea until you open a powerful tool and don't know where to begin. Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular business intelligence tools available, allowing you to connect to diverse data sources and build impressive visualizations. This guide strips away the complexity and walks you through the essential steps to get started, helping you transform your raw data into clear, actionable insights.

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What is Power BI, Really?

At its core, Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive dashboards. Whether your data lives in a simple Excel workbook or is scattered across various cloud-based and on-premises sources, Power BI helps you connect, visualize, and share what's important.

For beginners, it’s helpful to understand its main components:

  • Power BI Desktop: A free Windows application you install on your computer. This is your workshop - where you connect to data, transform and model it, and design your reports with charts and graphs.
  • Power BI Service: An online Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, sometimes referred to as Power BI Online. This is your showroom - where you publish your reports from the Desktop app to share them with others, create dashboards, and collaborate.
  • Power BI Mobile: A mobile app for Windows, iOS, and Android devices. It lets you and your team access your reports and dashboards securely from anywhere.

The typical workflow moves from Desktop to the Service and then to Mobile for consumption. We’ll focus primarily on Power BI Desktop, as that’s where all the report building happens.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Power BI

Creating your first report involves a few core stages. We’ll use a common business scenario - analyzing sales data from a spreadsheet - to make the steps relatable and easy to follow.

Step 1: Download Power BI and Get Your Data

First things first, you need the tool. You can download Power BI Desktop for free from the Microsoft Store. Once it’s installed, you’re ready to bring in your data.

Imagine you have an Excel sheet with columns like OrderID, OrderDate, Region, Product Category, Units Sold, and Sale Price.

  1. Open Power BI Desktop. You'll see a welcome screen with several options. You can close this and go straight to the main canvas.
  2. From the Home ribbon at the top, click on Get Data. A dropdown menu appears with the most common data sources.
  3. Select Excel Workbook. A file browser will open. Locate your sales data spreadsheet and click Open.
  4. The Navigator window will pop up, showing you all the sheets and tables within your workbook. Check the box next to the sheet or table containing your sales data. A preview will appear on the right.
  5. You now have two options: Load or Transform Data.

Let’s choose Transform Data and move to the next step.

Step 2: Clean and Transform Your Data in Power Query

Raw data is rarely ready for reporting. It might have errors, inconsistent formatting, or extra columns you don’t need. The Power Query Editor is a powerful tool inside Power BI for getting your data into shape. You're not changing the original file, think of it as creating a recipe of preparation steps.

Once you click "Transform Data," the Power Query Editor opens in a new window. Here are a few common cleaning tasks:

  • Remove Unnecessary Columns: If your sheet has columns like "Notes" or "Internal Code," you can select them and click Remove Columns from the Home tab. Tidying your dataset makes it easier to work with.
  • Check Data Types: Power Query is smart about guessing data types, but it's not always perfect. Look at the little icon next to each column header (123 for whole numbers, 1.2 for decimals, a calendar for dates, ABC for text). If your Sale Price is labeled as text, click the ABC icon and change it to Decimal Number. If your OrderDate isn't a date, change it. Correct data types are essential for calculations.
  • Handle Errors or Blanks: You can right-click a column header and choose Replace Values to find null or blank entries and replace them (e.g., with 0 for numerical columns). You can also use the Remove Rows option to remove any empty rows.
  • Create Custom Columns: Need to calculate revenue? Go to the Add Column tab and click Custom Column. You can create a new column named Revenue with a simple formula, like: [Units Sold] * [Sale Price] Power BI’s formula language is called DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), and this is a basic example of it.

On the right-hand side, you'll see a panel called Applied Steps. Every change you make is recorded here. This is a brilliant feature because you can click back on a step to see what the data looked like before or click the "X" to undo it.

Once you’re happy with the prepared data, click Close & Apply in the top-left corner. The Power Query window will close, and your cleaned data will load into your Power BI report.

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Step 3: Build Your Report Visuals

You’re now back in the main Power BI report view. This is your canvas with three key panels:

  • Fields (right): A list of your data tables and all their columns (or fields).
  • Visualizations (middle): Where you select and format your charts and graphs.
  • Canvas (left/main): Where you'll drag and drop fields to build your report.

Let's build a few simple visuals to answer some business questions:

What are our total sales by product category?

  1. From the Visualizations pane, click on the icon for a Stacked column chart. A blank chart placeholder appears on your canvas.
  2. With the new chart selected, go to the Fields pane. Drag your Product Category field into the X-axis box below the visualizations.
  3. Next, drag your Revenue field (the custom column we created) into the Y-axis box.

Instantly, you have an interactive chart showing revenue for each product category.

How have our sales trended over time?

  1. Click on an empty space on the canvas.
  2. Select the Line chart icon from the Visualizations pane.
  3. Drag OrderDate to the X-axis and Revenue to the Y-axis. Power BI will automatically create a date hierarchy (Year, Quarter, Month, Day), allowing you to drill down into the data.

What is our total revenue?

  1. Click on an empty space on the canvas again.
  2. Select the Card visual. A card is perfect for showing a single, important number.
  3. Drag the Revenue field into the Fields box for the card. It will now display a large, single number summarizing your total revenue.

A key feature of Power BI is its interactivity. Try clicking on one of the bars in your product category chart. All the other visuals on the page - the line chart and the card - will automatically filter to show data just for that category. This "cross-filtering" is what makes dashboards so insightful.

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Step 4: Publish and Share Your Report

A report is most valuable when you can share it with your team. Once you’re satisfied with your report in Power BI Desktop, you can publish it to the Power BI Service.

  1. First, save your file. From the File menu, click Save. This creates a .pbix file on your computer.
  2. On the Home ribbon, click Publish.
  3. You’ll be prompted to sign in to your Power BI account if you haven’t already. If you don't have one, you'll need to sign up with a work or school email address.
  4. Choose a destination for your report, usually "My Workspace" to start.
  5. After a few moments, you’ll get a success message with a link to open your report in the Power BI Service.

From the Power BI Service, you can organize your reports into dashboards, schedule data refreshes, and securely share a link with your colleagues, who can then view and interact with the report on their browsers or mobile devices.

Final Thoughts

Microsoft Power BI is an incredibly robust platform for turning complex information into clear, interactive visuals. By following the workflow of connecting to data, transforming it in Power Query, building reports on the canvas, and publishing to the web, you have a solid foundation for creating your own insightful dashboards.

While Power BI is one of the best tools out there, the learning curve can be steep for those who aren’t dedicated data analysts. We built Graphed because we believe getting answers from your data shouldn't require weeks of training. By connecting your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, or HubSpot, you can use simple, natural language - like "Show me my sales by product for the last quarter as a bar chart" - and watch a real-time dashboard get built in seconds rather than spending hours managing data models and configuring visuals.

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