From Excel to Power BI in 12 Minutes (Beginner Essentials)

Learn how to use Power BI for data analysis and interactive dashboards.
➡️ Download the example file here and follow along: bit.ly/file240312
👩‍🏫 Master data cleaning with Power Query: bit.ly/pqcourse240312
👩‍🏫 Transform any data into insights with Power Pivot: bit.ly/ppcourse240312
👩‍🏫 Round out your data analysis skills with Power BI: bit.ly/pbicourse240312
Ever felt like you're wrestling with spreadsheets, trying to make sense of overwhelming data, only to end up with static charts that barely scratch the surface of what's truly happening? You're not alone! The leap from Excel to Power BI is about turning that frustration into empowerment.
For those at the starting line of data analysis in Power BI, this journey transforms daunting data into dynamic, insightful visualizations. Power BI excels where Excel reaches its limits. With advanced data integration, it connects to almost any data source you can think of. Its visualization capabilities are not only more sophisticated but also interactive, allowing for insights that speak volumes more than static charts.
Real-time analytics? Power BI has it covered, offering live updates directly in your dashboards. And when it comes to collaboration, Power BI makes sharing insights a breeze across your organization.
Simply put, Power BI is designed to make your data work harder for you.
LEARN MORE
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⏲ TIMESTAMPS
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0:00 Why Power BI is better than Excel
1:03 How & where to download Power BI
1:22 Importing data to Power BI
3:19 Building a dashboard with visualizations
7:35 One of the coolest things about Power BI
8:13 Another way of filtering data with slicers
9:37 Creating focused pages with this feature
10:41 Sharing & collaborating in Power BI
#Excel #PowerBI #PowerBITutorial

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

❓What's your goal in learning Power BI? Are you looking to visualize your data, uncover insights, or maybe something else? Master data cleaning with Power Query: bit.ly/pqcourse240312 Transform any data into insights with Power Pivot: bit.ly/ppcourse240312 Round out your data analysis skills with Power BI: bit.ly/pbicourse240312

[@shakiraasfoor7599]

i need bi to analyze big data when excel stops to respond. i need it with accounting and financial techniques to come up with insights

[@MBuhler-mz7hp]

I need assistance setting up a system to "get" monthly data including various departments from one folder. Additionally, the system should create individual dashboards for each department that update when files are open. The dashboards should include several sheets or tabs: 1. Detailed actual data for each month, including transaction descriptions 2. A comparison between budgeted and actual figures at various levels 3. An interactive feature allowing users to input projected actuals for each month. This sheet will interact with actuals sheet. I watch all you videos and appreciate the sound advice you provide.

[@gorflunk]

Clear, concise, and to the point! Just what I needed to understand what a Power BI even was and a nice demo to boot. Thanks!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Thank you! So glad you liked it!

[@wanoschwarzpulvergmbh7227]

pure joy by watching all of your videos!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Glad you like them! 🙏😊

[@chrism9037]

Excellent Mynda. I've workd hard to up my Power BI skills and it has been a huge help

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Glad it was helpful, thank you!

[@jonmanalo9196]

Just when I think that I know Power BI well enough, Mynda reminds me that I am but a novice. This is invaluable. TY!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Thank you for the support! 😊

[@bridgeyang350]

However small and middle-size companies in Australia still prefer to use Excel. I got this opinion from the job market requirement. Companies always need "advanced Excel skills" Power BI needs licenses to view the shared reports while Excel can be shared by email attachment. It can save the cost for small-size companies.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Absolutely, Power BI skills aren't an alternative to Excel skills. If your market is small to medium sized businesses, then Excel is the likely way to go.

[@HippieP629]

Very impressive and useful. I almost bang my head on the desk when I see yet another 1-off excel spreadsheet someone’s made. I use docs like coda, notion, etc. so I’m biased but seeing data from so many sources in power bi is extremely useful

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Great to hear it'll be useful!

[@mogarrett3045]

excellent tutorial as always

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Glad you think so! 🙏

[@missamo80]

Super cool. I had no idea Power BI was a thing, looks like a really nice way to make interactive reports.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

These are just the basics, you can do a lot more with Power BI 😃

[@whazee]

I've been learning Power BI for the last few months and there's definitely some useful tips in here regarding formatting! I hope you do some more with DAX in the future as that's my biggest hurdle. Cheers!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Glad it was helpful! You might like to consider my Power Pivot & DAX course to get your skills up to speed quickly: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/power-pivot-course

[@samta7496]

I use both Power BI and Excel, both have thier strengths and weaknesses in my opinion.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Agreed, both are great 😊

[@apamwamba]

exellent overview of PowerBI!!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Thank you! Glad you liked it 😃

[@trevordennis]

Charts are fun to look at for managers, but mostly useless to finance teams. Finance people want to see the numbers so they can keep analyzing them themselves afterwards. Excel with built-in PowerQuery can do the pivots and charts too and work with splicers also but still show numbers that they need to see.

[@mathijs9365]

Yep. Drilldown to row detail. Dashboard nice to have as an overall picture. But u cant do analyses on it

[@Ugk871]

Agreed. Numbers is still important

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Absolutely, for analysis Excel will often win, but for reports, Power BI is superior.

[@jeslovermusic578]

This is a hard truth

[@IamTheReaper911]

Oh wow!! This was great 👍

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Glad you liked it!! 😁

[@samranerabii1950]

Thanks for share !

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

My pleasure! 😊

[@SholaDsdg]

enjoyed it! Love that dress!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Thanks so much 😊

[@mllawhorn5584]

I'm missing the obvious... how to open power query editor from power BI web app (rather than desktop)? Love your tutorials Mynda!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

You need the Power BI desktop app to open Power Query.

[@martintayler23]

Thank you for this insight into Power BI, Mynda. After installing the App I found your display allows you to have 'Format' as a pinned menu and rather than 'Build a Visual'. I have a menu titled 'Visualizations' with 'Format Visual' as a paint icon. My version is 2.126.1261.0 64-bit (February 2024). Maybe this is an update? Also, using your sample I was unable to edit the 'Title' by double--clicking as you demonstrated. However, I was able to edit it under Visualisations...General...Title and then Text. Not sure if there is some setting I missed that caused the inability to edit by double-clicking the 'Text Box' object? I completed most of your lesson until I got to adding a page to do filtering. There was no option for page type under page information so I could not set up a drill down category by this method but instead by the 'Build Visual' icon. In the end it didn't display exactly as your example but I understood the concept.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Great to see you gave it a go, Martin. You can enable the pinned formatting menus by going into the File tab > Settings & Options > Settings > Preview Features and enabling 'on object editing' or something to that effect. You'll need to restart Power BI, but once you've done that you should be able to follow the video exactly as you see it.

[@moxie1189]

Hi Mynda, great tutorial as usual. Could I make a request for a future video. I was recently asked by a stakeholder to include dynamic commentary in a Power BI report. The Excel file is stored on Sharepoint and displayed in a table within Power BI desktop, to be updated each month. It required a bit of fiddling to get it to work initially. I was wondering if you had a better, more easily repeatable approach. Thanks

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Once you publish your report to the Power BI service it will automatically update, or you can schedule a more frequent refresh as required. Power BI Desktop was only intended to be the report design tool, so refreshing from there will always be manual.

[@waterfun2610]

Do you recommend Power BI over Tableau? Do you mind sharing your thoughts on the future of both softwares?

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

I haven't used Tableau but if you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Power BI is the clear leader in this tech space: powerbi.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-named-a-leader-in-the-2023-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-bi-platforms/

[@jeffstevens9729]

@@MyOnlineTrainingHub Hi Mynda, I think it's that Gartner puts the whole Microsoft stack above Salesforce (Tableau) for BI. I personally like Tableau better than PBI for data viz but would have to go with Microsoft over it because of PowerQuery and integration of Excel and now Fabric over a stand-alone tool like Tableau.

[@RobertWoodman]

This is my first time encountering Power BI, and I want to learn it from home. I noticed there is a sign-in feature in Power BI. However, when I tried to sign in, Microsoft said I needed a work or school account. My work account is not an option for me, and I have no school account. Do you have suggestions? Do I even need to sign in?

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

You can learn most of Power BI using the free Power BI Desktop app. You only need to login to the online Power BI service for sharing reports. You can get a suitable email address by signing up for a free 365 trial as explained here: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/enterprise/service-admin-signing-up-for-power-bi-with-a-new-office-365-trial

[@thestitchmenagerie]

Does your Power BI course go over how to share with users outside your organization? I have a report that I distribute to partners quarterly. The report is currently in Excel (one tab per partner with ~200 partners). Currently, I PDF every report and then use PAD to run a script that sends an email to every partner that includes their PDF report. All of the partners are outside of our organization (I work for a CPA firm and the partners are our client). We are wanting to move to Power BI because of it visual capabilities and also to give the partners are place they can go to see their data (I often get at least 20 emails asking for a copy of their report because they deleted or misplaced the email with attachment).

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Yes and no. If you want to build one report and restrict access to specific segments of the data based on the user, you can use Row Level Security, but this only works for people inside your organisation. This means you'd have to give each external user with a Microsoft Entra ID. These users would also require a Power BI Pro license at US$10/month. However, if you're creating 200 separate reports and you just want each recipient to see their own report, then you don't need them to be 'inside' your org. However, they would still need a Power BI Pro license each. So, yes, I cover Row Level Security and sharing, but this is a unique situation. More on Microsoft Entra here: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/whitepaper-azure-b2b-power-bi#case-study-building-a-bi-portal-using-power-bi--azure-ad-b2b--step-by-step-instructions If you have follow up questions, please reach out via email as I won't see them posted to this thread: website at MyOnlineTrainingHub.com

[@heinzthedutch]

How can any piece of sofware be better than Excel...? I....I....can only stammer... But I think I see what you mean ;-) Thanks again for another great video!

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

😆 Excel will always have its place and my ❤️

[@ExcelWithChris]

Please please help. Power Query. Somewhere I saw you can get a result in a step, then export that result to another query, come back to this query and ref the step before "exporting" and carry on with the current query.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Hi Chris, Please post your question and sample Excel file on our forum where someone can help you further: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-forum

[@hahome155]

Honestly I feel Qlik much much powerful in performance. I use both and I love power bi but Qlik win :(

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Interesting to hear. Gartner rank Qlik 3rd behind Tableau. I've not used either, so can't speak from experience: powerbi.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/microsoft-named-a-leader-in-the-2023-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-bi-platforms/

[@steven.h0629]

Bye Mynda 😘.. I'll stop in now and then to check on you 👍😎✊ Retired and tossed all this away

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Steven! Congratulations on your retirement 🎉May the next chapter of your life be excel-lent in a different way 😜

[@steven.h0629]

@@MyOnlineTrainingHub 😘

[@gorflunk]

Just another 2 years for me. Congrats and stay active!

[@1310kumarrakesh]

Funky charts or graphs doesn’t produce any insights for managers, even in corporate world high level authorities seems more comfortable with simple excel worksheet.

[@Locomaid]

CEOs want a single slide. But…the next levels down can use well-designed reports on a daily basis. Anyone not comfortable working and leading with data is in danger of falling behind or off the ladder…

[@HippieP629]

@@LocomaidAgreed. In my opinion, it’s up to software support to keep users up on platforms like this. I see 1-off spreadsheets every week from colleagues and it’s baffling to me. The amount of time wasted and data not sourced more intelligently is insane

[@Ugk871]

Power BI is not flexible as Excel. Well, Excel is just a spreadsheet.

[@MyOnlineTrainingHub]

Excel will always have a place because of it's flexibility, but Power BI is simply better for reporting.