Power BI Tutorial for Beginners | Copilot Solves The #1 Problem

About this video

David’s beginner Power BI tutorial tackles the ‘blank page problem’ — having data but not knowing what to build — and shows Copilot as the shortcut past it. Power BI Desktop is installed from the Microsoft Store (Report Builder is noted as better for printed reports; the app and tutorial are Windows-only). The interface tour covers the report pane, property panes, ribbon, and view switcher. Using a sample Excel file about a donut business, data is imported via the Excel workbook button, loading two tables: sales/profit by flavor and store addresses. Because the loaded data is messy, the tutorial reopens it in Power Query Editor via Transform Data: the flavor column is fixed with Capitalize Each Word and Trim to remove leading spaces, and the combined address column is split by comma delimiter, then by space to separate state and ZIP, with the extra column removed and columns renamed. Transforms are saved as repeatable steps; Close & Apply commits them, and the profit column is formatted as currency. In Model view, Power BI has inferred a relationship between the tables on store number (manual relationships can be created by dragging one column onto the matching one). Back in Report view, Copilot’s ‘Suggest content for a new report page’ proposes pages; creating ‘flavor popularity’ yields a top-five chart, and a follow-up prompt — show popularity of all flavors over time — refines it. A chart is also built manually: pick an area chart, drag month to X-axis and units sold to Y-axis, drill down from year to quarters to months, and change colors and title in Format Visual. Clicking a data point filters the whole page, and a state map visual cross-filters because of the table relationship. The tutorial adds report pages, builds a mobile layout (manually or with auto-create), then publishes to a workspace and notes embedding in SharePoint or a website, QR codes, export to Excel/PowerPoint/PDF, sharing links, subscriptions, and data alerts.

Key takeaways

• Power BI Desktop is Windows-only; install it from the Microsoft Store and start from a blank report
• Clean data in Power Query before building: capitalize/trim text, split combined columns by delimiters, rename columns, and set formats like currency — cleanup is often more than half the job
• Check Model view before reporting: verify the inferred relationship between tables (or drag columns to create one) so cross-filtering works
• Copilot’s ‘Suggest content for a new report page’ breaks the blank-page problem; refine its charts with follow-up prompts, and build manually by dragging fields to axes and drilling down hierarchies
• Clicking a data point or map bubble filters the whole report; finish by designing a mobile layout and publishing to a workspace, with embed, export, subscription, and alert options

Episode details: published May 16, 2025 · 11:54 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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