How to Create a Report in Power BI (Step-by-Step)

A Power BI Report is how you show the insights and findings from a dataset. This is the differentiating point between Power BI and Excel 🧐

Excel shows you data in rows and columns only whereas a report gives you the data in visuals and tables that you can design and customize yourself.

So, how do you create a report in Power BI? Is it difficult? Does it take a lot of time? Let’s find out the answers to these questions and more.

In this tutorial, we will see how to prepare data for a report, and how to create and modify it.

Table of Contents

What is a Power BI Report?

Microsoft has a good definition of what Power BI reports are:

“…a multi-perspective view into a dataset, with visuals that represent different findings and insights from that dataset.”

Simply, Power BI reports are visuals that explain your dataset better. A report could just be a single visual or pages of visuals 🟩

These reports came from a dataset. The visuals could then be pinned on dashboards.

Here’s a graph that explains the relationship of reports with dashboards and datasets:

Prepare your data

Before you can create any reports in Power BI, you need a dataset and a blank report canvas.

You can import data from another third party like Excel, or SQL or you can use the sample data given by Power BI Desktop to implement the functionalities.

Alternatively, if you want a ready-made report for parallel guidance, you can use the Sample Reports given in Power BI Desktop 💻

For this exercise, we’ll be using the “Retail Analysis Sample” prepared by Microsoft and Obvience.

If you don’t know how to get sample data, check out this tutorial: How to Use the Included Sample Data in Power BI (+Examples) and download the file.

Now to prepare the data,

Step 1) Once you have the file downloaded, locate it on your computer and open it.

The Navigator window will pop up on the screen with a preview of what the dataset will look like in the Power BI report.

Step 2) Select the file you want to load into Power BI.

Step 3) Wait for the file to load.

Once it loads you can either begin working on it or make formatting changes by going to Power Query Editor from the ribbon.

It is better to view the data in Power Query Editor because oftentimes some unnoticed errors appear in the dataset 📃

To fix those bugs, you might need to make a few edits here and there. Power Query Editor will open up in a new window.

To open it,

Step 1) Click on the Transform option from the Queries section in the Home tab.

The Power Query Editor takes in your data set and lets you modify it before loading it into the report. Its most important part is the ribbon that has all the data transformation functions you need.

From inserting a new source to removing and splitting a column, Power Query Editor has it all. You can also merge queries, change parameters, refresh preview and more.

Next, we have the Data preview table that contains the actual data set and shows only the first 1000 rows of it. All the transformation operations are being performed on this data here 🔃

On the right side, you have the Query Settings or Applied Steps. This contains a list of all the operations that have been performed on the data set.

Once you’re down with all the changes you need to make, select Close & Apply from the top left. This will load the data into the Power BI report 📃

Power BI Report Builder

The Power BI Report builder has three main parts you need to know about.

• Canvas
• Visualizations Pane
• Data Pane

Canvas is the blank white page displayed on the screen where you insert your visuals.

The visualization pane is the most important as you will be taking all visuals to insert in the canvas from there. It also lets you edit, format and update the values of the visuals ⬛

The Data pane contains fields of your dataset in a list order as the name of each column.

Create a Power BI Report

If you have tried creating charts and graphs for your data in Excel, then creating reports in Power BI is even easier.

The retail analysis sample is composed of data about retail sales of items sold across multiple stores and districts. There’s also data about this year’s performance, last year’s sales, units, gross margin, variance, and others 📈

Say, you want to know and make a report about the total sales this year per item category.

Now, there are 2 ways to achieve that. You can either:

• Select the fields first then visualizations after
• Or if you have a specific visualization in mind, select the type of visual first then the fields after

You can implement any of the two as you like.

To start, focus your attention on the fields pane.

Step 1) Select Product and then Products option at the top.

Step 2) Select Industries and Industry from the fields.

While clicking those fields, a visual will appear on the canvas:

Cool, right? Creating a report has never been this easy 😃

But now, you think that a pie chart is a better visual for your data.

To change the type of visual,

Step 1) Head over to the visualizations pane.

Step 2) Click the pie chart icon.

The selected visual will appear on the report as:

How fun is that? You can change it to any visual in a similar way 😎

Modify Power BI Report

If you feel your visual is slightly out of place or the text is just too small, you can always fix it. Power BI allows you to edit your report in different ways, from changing the size of visuals to font and more.

Say, we want to enlarge the size of the visual in the above report.

To do that,

Step 1) Select the visual and pinch its corners to make them small.

You can access other options to edit a report by clicking on the Format visual button in the Visualizations Pane.

Try it now! 😃

Save Power BI Report

If you move out of the report builder without saving your report, the work you did would be for nothing ☹

To save your report,

Step 1) Click File from the tab list and select Save or press CTRL + S.

Step 2) Enter the name of your Power BI Report.

And your report has been saved! 🤩

Conclusion

In this guide, we saw how to create a report in Power BI. We learned what a report is, and how the report builder works. We also saw how to modify a report in Power BI and save it 📁

The task might look daunting at first, but once you create your first report – it will seem like a walk in the park. Power BI’s robust features further add to the utility of your reports.

To learn more about Power BI and reports, give the following articles a read:

Power BI Dashboard vs. Report: The Pros and Cons

How to Create Groups in Power BI: Get an Overview of Your Data

How to Insert Images in Power BI (Step-by-Step)

We hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as we did! 🤗