You already know half of Power BI. Bring your Power Query steps, Data Model and DAX measures from Excel into Power BI Desktop and build an interactive report.
What carries over from Excel
| In Excel | In Power BI Desktop |
|---|---|
| Power Query Editor | Same editor: Home › Transform data |
| Power Pivot Data Model | Same engine: Model view and Table view |
| Diagram View relationships | Model view |
| DAX measures | Same DAX: Home › New measure |
| PivotTables, PivotCharts and slicers | Visuals on a report page, with slicers and cross-filtering |
Step 1: Install Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop is free for Windows, from the Microsoft Store or Microsoft’s download page. There is no Mac version.
Step 2: Import your Excel model
- Save and close your Excel workbook that has the Data Model.
- In Power BI Desktop, go to File › Import › Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View.
- Select the workbook and click Start.
Power BI copies your queries, tables, relationships and measures. Check Model view to confirm the relationships came through.
Step 3: Build a one-page report
- Cards across the top for the key numbers: Total Sales, Orders, Margin %, YoY Growth %.
- A line chart of Total Sales by month.
- A bar chart of sales by category or store.
- A table with the details.
- Slicers for financial year and region.
Click a bar in any chart and the other visuals filter to match. That interaction is what PivotTables can’t easily do.
Step 4: Design for the reader
- Answer one question per page, and put that question in the page title.
- Put the most important number top-left. People read reports the way they read a page.
- Use one accent colour for what matters, grey for everything else.
- Show at most 5–7 visuals per page.
Step 5: Share it
Publish with Home › Publish to the Power BI service. Sharing reports with other people generally requires a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User licence, or a workspace on a capacity your organisation pays for. For your own portfolio, use screenshots, a short screen recording, or share the .pbix file.
What you have learned in this series
Power Query
Repeatable cleaning that refreshes with one click.
StorePower Pivot
Millions of rows in the Data Model.
ModelRelationships
A star schema instead of lookups.
CalculateDAX
Measures that react to every filter.
Put it together in a portfolio project, as suggested in the Data Analyst roadmap.
FAQ
Should I stop using Power Pivot?
No. Excel is still the right tool for analysis you share as a workbook. Use Power BI when you need interactive dashboards that many people view.
Can I connect Excel to a Power BI dataset?
Yes. With access to the published semantic model, use Insert › PivotTable › From Power BI in Excel to analyse it with a PivotTable.
Is Power BI hard to learn after Excel?
If you have worked through this series, the data part is the same. What’s new is report design and publishing.