
Power BI Desktop is free, and if you know Excel pivot tables and Power Query, you already know half of it.
1. Get data
Home → Get data → Excel workbook, pick your sales file, tick the table, click Transform Data to open Power Query — the same editor as in Excel.
2. Clean it
- Set column types (Date, Whole number, Text).
- Remove blank rows, trim text, split columns if needed.
- Close & Apply.
3. Add measures
Total Sales = SUM ( Sales[Amount] )
Orders = COUNTROWS ( Sales )
Avg Order = DIVIDE ( [Total Sales], [Orders] )
Same DAX as Power Pivot.
4. Build the page
- Card visuals for Total Sales, Orders, Avg Order.
- Line chart: Date on the axis, Total Sales as value.
- Bar chart: Sales by Region.
- Slicer for Product category.
Click any bar and every other visual filters automatically — this cross-filtering is the big step up from Excel charts.
5. Share
Save the .pbix. With a Power BI account you can Publish to the Power BI service and share a link; otherwise export to PDF.
💡 Keep refreshing simple: if the Excel file path stays the same, Home → Refresh pulls in next month’s data with every step re-applied.
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