Connecting to a Data Source.

The first step in creating a Power BI report is connecting to the data source data is not generated from within Power BI instead. We use the get data function to connect to the source and make a copy of the data in Power BI.

Some of the most common data sources that we use are Excel files, CSV, or text files. Sometimes we use SQL Server databases, Microsoft Azure, and we can even connect directly to a web URL.

Once we have made the connection we can then load the data into our report and perform the analysis and the visualizations.

One of the most common ways to connect to a file is through Excel. So connecting to an Excel workbook allows us to pull down data typically client data, transaction data, asset data, many more different types of workbooks that we would use in Excel. So once we have done that we will typically use the first row as field name. So Power BI will bring the data in and use the headings.

Sometimes we connect to more than one data source. So for example, we might choose to connect to an Excel workbook which holds some client details and as well as that we'll connect your SQL Server table which holds transactions, we would bring them both together to create the analysis and the visualizations.

Let's do a workout and see how to connect Power BI data.

So here we have Power BI report and the first stage is to use the Home tab and the Get Data button.

You can see here we have a wide range of data sources available to us. I'm just going to select Excel workbook.

And select the file that I want. So I'm going to choose module 2 lesson 2a and click on open.

Once I've done that the navigator will launch and I can see here any Excel worksheets that are contained within that workbook. I'm going to use this one here and I'll get a preview of the dataset before I bring it into Power BI.

Now I'm going to click on load and it will take a copy of that data and bring it into my Power BI report. Over to the right here we can see the field names which are the column headings. It has taken from Row 1 of the dataset.