Part 1
Introduction to Power Bi.
Power BI is a data analysis and visualization tool by Microsoft that helps turn raw data into charts, graphs, and reports.
In this beginner friendly guide,I will take you through all the essentials to get you started on your data journey. We will cover how to import data, build your first charts and even how to share with others.
However , we will first have to download and install power Bi on our laptops/desktops.
1. Download and and install power Bi
To get started we will download and install power bi desktop, it is free and gives you all you need to build a project from scratch
on your computer search bar, type in Microsoft store. This resource comes already pre installed so you will definitely find it.
Once there search for a Power Bi desktop.
This is the icon:
Once downloaded,go to download and launch to install.
Once its installed you will see this home screen
Now we can import data, build dashboards and even reports
2.Importing Data
On the home screen, choose blank report. this is the first step to data importation.
This should be your screen after blank report,
This is the report view, at the center of it are some of the most common data sources.
Power bi lets you get data from so many data sources, excell, dataflows, dataverse, and even sql servers,cloud services etc.
By clicking the top first icon, you can see the various data sources;
Data sources in power bi
However for this guide we will use data from an excell workbook. So on the menu, click of excell work book and choose the data from your files.
*Nb * A common first time problem-sometimes data is saved as with a .csv extension thus the file might not be visible with the excell files, on your files list click all files to be able to view the csv file.
3.Load and Transform data
Once you have your data, below you will see load and transform data icons.
Load data- if you load data, powe bi will bring in the data exactly as it appears in the excell file, straight import. No data cleaning will have been made
Transform data- we click on transform, you will open what we call the power query. This is an editor for data,its used for data cleaning even before loading it.
NB You can always prepare and transform data after loading, use the transform data icon to get to power query mode.
4.Data cleaning in power bi
Data cleaning in Power bi is done using the power query, and is the process of preparing data so it is accurate, complete, and ready for analysis. It involves fixing errors, removing duplicate or unwanted data, and organizing information into a clear format.
some common data cleaning actions:
- remove extra columns
- clear or correct blanks
- Check fro duplicates
- _ Fix wrong values_
- Standardize data types in columns
- column split
However, the action is not really deleting, the queries are stored on the right side under applied steps and an action can always be undone incase it was a mistake.
Once you are done click on close and apply on the top left to apply the changes you have made to the table.
5.Table view and report view
Table view is where our our actual data is ,and where data manipulation happens, once that is done the actions/results can be seen in the report view as charts,table or card visuals.
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