Importing data in Power BI

- [Instructor] Reports need data. Before you can create visualizations and gain insights, you'll need to be able to import datasets into Power BI. In this lesson, I'll walk you through two ways that you can import data into this powerful software. You can install Power BI on your PC by going to the Microsoft Store and searching for Power BI. When you open Power BI Desktop, you'll see the start screen. I'll go ahead and close it. The first way to import data for your reports is from an Excel spreadsheet. In this example, I am importing a list of customers from Excel. There are two ways to do this. You can either select Excel workbook in the ribbon near the top of the screen, or import data from Excel from the Add Data menu. I'm going to select Excel workbook from the home ribbon. This brings up a dialogue where I can select the spreadsheet I want to import. I'm going to open the customer file. You can download this in the exercise files. It's called Customer Data. Navigator opens and has identified one data table in my worksheet called Customer. The data looks correct, so I will select Load and bring it into Power BI. The Customer table now displays in the Fields pane. When I expand the Customer table using the dropdown, I can see the fields it contains. For a detailed look at your dataset, you can select the Data tab on the left panel. The next way to import data for your reports is from the web. Let's say I want to compare my sales to state populations. I can import the data from online into Power BI. I'll start by selecting the dropdown under Get Data on the home ribbon at the top of the workspace and then select Web. Then I'll paste the URL for my data and select, OK. The Navigator dialogue shows all the tables Power BI found on that webpage. I can preview each one to find the table I'm looking for. I'll select Table 1, but based on the preview, I'll need to filter out some of the fields and clean up the rows. Select Transform Data to open the Power Query editor. This is where you can modify the data used in your visualizations. To do this, I'll remove the columns I'm not interested in. I don't need the ranking columns, so I'll select the first column. And in the top ribbon, I'll select remove columns twice. Notice how as changes are made, you'll be able to see them in the Query Settings panel on the right, in the Applied Steps box. If I need to undo a step, say removing a column, I can select the X next to that step. So now I have a clean table, and it's ready for my workspace. Before closing the table, I'm going to give it a name by right-clicking the table name and selecting Rename. I'll enter States. Then I'll select Close and Apply. Now, the States table is in the Fields panel on the right side of the screen and is ready for use. Creating visual images starts with having the right data. Consider what data you have access to, and try importing it into Power BI. Whether it's an Excel workbook or the web, Power BI can support you in collecting your data to create compelling visualizations. Try exploring some data sources this week.