Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is the free application used to connect to data, model relationships, and design reports before publishing them to the cloud.

The Three Main Views

  • Report View - the canvas where visuals, charts, and pages are built.
  • Data View - shows the raw, loaded data in table form, useful for inspecting values directly.
  • Model View - shows relationships between different tables, similar to a database schema diagram.

Key Panes in Report View

  • Visualizations pane - choose and configure chart types.
  • Fields pane - lists all available tables and columns to drag onto the canvas.
  • Filters pane - apply page-level, report-level, or visual-level filters.

Building a Report

Get Data -> Transform (Power Query) -> Model relationships -> Drag fields onto a visual in Report View
Switching between Report, Data, and Model views frequently while building a report helps catch data issues early - a broken relationship in Model View often explains a chart that looks wrong in Report View.

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