Add visuals to a Power BI report (part 1)

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

This article provides a quick introduction to creating a visualization in a report. For more advanced information, see part 2 of this article.

Prerequisites

Power BI Desktop

This tutorial uses the Sales and Marketing Sample.

1. Download the sample PBIX file to your desktop.

2. In Power BI Desktop, select File > Open report.

3. Browse to and select the Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX file, and then select Open.

   The Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX file opens in report view.

4. At the bottom, select the green plus symbol to add a new page to the report.

Power BI service

This tutorial uses the Sales and Marketing Sample in the Power BI service.

1. Sign in to the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com).

2. Select Learn in the navigation pane.

3. On the Learning center page, under Sample reports, locate and select the Sales and Marketing Sample to download it.

4. The Sales and Marketing Sample opens in report view:

   

5. At the top, select Edit to display the Visualizations pane.

6. At the bottom, select the green plus symbol to add a new page to the report.

Note

If you want to share your report with a colleague, you both need to have individual Power BI Pro licenses or the report needs to be saved in Premium capacity. For more information, see Share a filtered Power BI report.

Add visualizations to the report

In this section, you create a visualization by selecting a field from the Data pane.

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

  

• Or start with a field like Product > Category. Power BI creates a table and adds that field to the Columns section:

  

• Or select the Filled map button and then select a geography field, like Geo > City. Power BI and Bing Maps create a map visualization:

  

Change the type of visualization

In this section, you create a visualization and then change its type.

1. On a new page, select Product > Category and then Product > Count of Product to add both fields to the Columns section:

   

2. Change the visualization to a column chart by selecting the Stacked column chart button on the Visualizations pane:

   

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

   

Related content

• Read part 2 of this article
• Learn about interacting with visualizations