Add visuals to a Power BI report (part 1)

APPLIES TO: ✔️ Power BI Desktop ✔️ Power BI service

This article gives a quick introduction to creating a visualization in a report. It applies to both the Power BI service and Power BI Desktop. For more-advanced content, see Part 2 of this series.

Prerequisites

This tutorial uses the Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX file.

1. From the upper left section of the Power BI Desktop menu bar, select File > Open report

2. Find your copy of the Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX file

3. Open the Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX file in report view .

4. Select to add a new page.

Note

Sharing your report with a Power BI colleague requires that you both have individual Power BI Pro licenses or that the report is saved in Premium capacity. See sharing reports

Add visualizations to the report

1. Create a visualization by selecting a field from the Fields pane.

   Start with a numeric field like SalesFact > Sales $. Power BI creates a column chart with a single column.

   

   Or, start with a field, such as Product > Category. Power BI creates a table and adds that field to the Values well.

   

   Or, start with a geography field, such as Geo > City. Power BI and Bing Maps create a map visualization.

   

Change the type of visualization

Create a visualization and then change its type.

1. Select Product > Category and then Product > Count of Product to add them both to the Values well.

   

2. Change the visualization to a column chart by selecting the Stacked column chart icon.

   

3. To change the way the visual is sorted, select More options (...) and then Sort axis. Use the menu options to change the direction of the Sort axis (ascending or descending) or change the column that is being sorted on.

   

Next steps

Continue on to:

• Part 2: Add visualizations to a Power BI report

• Interact with the visualizations in the report.