What is Get Data in Power BI?

Your Power BI reports are only as good as the data you feed them, and "Get Data" is the front door to that entire process. It's the essential first step you'll take every time you start a new project. This guide walks you through what "Get Data" is, the most common data sources you'll connect, and a simple walkthrough of your first import.

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What 'Get Data' in Power BI ACTUALLY Means

Think of "Get Data" as Power BI's universal connector and translator. Located prominently in the "Home" tab of the Power BI Desktop ribbon, this feature is the gateway to importing information from a large variety of sources into your reporting environment. At its core, "Get Data" is the "Extract" part in the ETL process (Extract, Transform, Load).

• Extract: You select a data source, and Power BI establishes a connection.
• Transform: Power BI’s Power Query Editor opens, allowing you to clean, shape, and model your data.
• Load: The clean data is loaded into your Power BI data model, ready for you to create visuals.

Without "Get Data," Power BI is an empty application full of potential visualizations but no information to visualize. It's the critical first move that enables you to pull raw numbers, text, and dates from where they live - be it a simple spreadsheet or a powerful cloud database - and begin turning them into meaningful business insights.

The Data Universe: Exploring Your Connection Options

The beauty of "Get Data" is the sheer volume of native connectors it supports. Microsoft knows that data doesn't live in a single, tidy location. It's scattered across your organization in different files, servers, and cloud applications. To get a better handle on this, you can group the sources into a few main categories.

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Flat Files and Folders

This is where virtually everyone starts their Power BI journey. These sources are simple, standalone files that are easy to access and understand, making them perfect for learning.

• Excel Workbook: The most common starting point. You can connect to an Excel file and pull in data from specific tables or entire sheets. This is ideal for financial models, marketing campaign trackers, or any manual export from another system.
• Text/CSV: Comma-Separated Values (CSV) files are a universal standard for exporting raw data from applications. If you've ever exported a list of contacts from a CRM or a transaction list from a payment processor, it was likely a CSV.
• Folder: This is a surprisingly powerful option. Instead of connecting to a single file, you can point Power BI to a folder. It will then combine all files of the same type within that folder into a single table. This is incredibly useful for consolidating monthly sales exports, where you get a new CSV or Excel file each month.

Databases

Databases are the structured heart of many business operations. They store information for everything from websites to internal applications. Power BI connects seamlessly with most of them.

• SQL Server: The go-to database for many businesses using the Microsoft ecosystem. Connecting is straightforward and highly optimized.
• Azure SQL Database: The cloud-based version of SQL Server, a common connector for businesses leveraging Microsoft's cloud infrastructure.
• MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.: Power BI doesn't just play nice with Microsoft products. It has robust connectors for countless other popular database systems, allowing you to centralize data from various technical stacks.

Online Services and Cloud Platforms

For modern marketing, sales, and operations teams, this is where the gold is. Power BI has dedicated connectors for many of the SaaS tools you use every day, allowing you to pull data directly via their APIs without downloading any files.

• Salesforce: Connect directly to Salesforce Reports or Objects to analyze your sales pipeline, team performance, and lead data.
• Google Analytics: Pull website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics straight into Power BI to combine with your sales and marketing spend data. A must-have for any digital marketer.
• SharePoint: Access data stored in SharePoint Lists or files stored in document libraries, centralizing information for internal reporting.
• Other SaaS Tools: The list is always growing and includes platforms like Zendesk, Marketo, Smartsheet, and many others.

Other Sources

Some powerful sources don't fit into these neat categories. One great example is the Web connector, which allows you to scrape data directly from a table on a webpage. For instance, you could pull stock prices, exchange rates, or even sports statistics from a site like Wikipedia and have it refresh automatically.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Importing Your First Dataset

Let's walk through the most common use case: importing data from a CSV file. The process is nearly identical for an Excel workbook. Imagine you have a simple CSV export from your Shopify store containing recent sales data.

Step 1: Locate the "Get Data" Button

Open Power BI Desktop. In the "Home" tab on the ribbon at the top, the "Get Data" icon is usually the first button on the left. Click it to open a dropdown of the most common sources.

Step 2: Choose Your Connector

From the dropdown, you can select a common source like "Excel workbook" or "Text/CSV" directly. If you don't see what you need, click "More..." at the bottom. This opens the full "Get Data" window, which lists every single available connector. You can use the search bar here to quickly find what you're looking for (e.g., type "Google Analytics"). For our example, select "Text/CSV" and click "Connect."

Step 3: Navigate to Your File

A standard file browser window will pop up. Locate the sales data CSV file you saved on your computer and click "Open."

Step 4: Preview and Confirm in the Navigator

Power BI now analyzes the file and shows you a preview window. This is a crucial checkpoint. It gives you a snapshot of the columns and rows Power BI has detected. You'll also see some options:

• File Origin: Usually defaults correctly, related to character encoding. You rarely need to change it.
• Delimiter: For a CSV, this will almost always be "Comma." If your data looks jumbled into one column, it means the wrong delimiter (like a Semicolon or Tab) was used. You can change it here to fix the preview.

You can also ask Power BI to make its best guess at data types based on the first 200 rows or the entire dataset you're importing. It's a good idea to leave it as default for now to have a faster load.

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Step 5: Decide to 'Load' or 'Transform Data'

At the bottom right of the preview window, you have two fundamental choices:

• Load: Click this if your data looks perfectly clean and ready to use. Power BI will pull the data directly into your report’s data model, and you can start building visuals immediately. You'd do this if dates are formatted correctly, column names are clear, and there aren't any blank rows or errors.
• Transform Data: This is the more common and recommended choice. Clicking this opens the Power Query Editor, a powerful tool for cleaning and preparing your data before it gets loaded. Here, you can perform hundreds of operations like:

Once you are happy with the state of your data, you click "Close & Apply" in the Power Query Editor to load the cleaned data into your model.

Final Thoughts

The "Get Data" feature is the foundation of every Power BI report you'll ever build. Understanding how to connect to different sources - from simple Excel files to complex cloud applications - unlocks your ability to centralize and analyze all the information that drives your business. Once you master this initial step, you’re well on your way to building actionable dashboards.

Learning the ins and outs of connecting, refreshing, and transforming data can often feel like a full-time job, especially when you need to combine data from platforms like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads. We built Graphed to cut through that complexity. Instead of wrestling with hundreds of connectors and spending hours in the Power Query Editor, you can connect your marketing and sales sources in one click and use simple English to build the dashboard you need in seconds. It allows you to skip straight to the insights.