Power BI is good news for journalists

Data has become an everyday part of journalism. But journalists and media outlets don’t always have the time, resources, or data journalism tools to incorporate data in ways that would make stories more impactful and compelling—until they discover Power BI.

Download Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop is a powerful data visualization tool that you can use to combine data from hundreds of databases, files, and web services. Then bring your data to life with built-in or community-created visuals—or create your own.

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Power BI Desktop is a free download available on Windows.

Download instructions and system requirements

If you’re using another operating system, you can still input data and create visualizations in the Power BI service.

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Getting started with data journalism

With Microsoft Power BI, you can clean and model your data, produce quick and easy visualizations, and publish interactive visualizations for your online audience to explore. This guide shows you a simple step-by-step process for using Microsoft Power BI to bring your data stories to life.

Here’s the common flow using Power BI:

1. Bring data into Power BI Desktop

2. Create visualizations

3. Publish to the Power BI service

4. Share your visualizations with your audience

Bring data into Power BI Desktop Create visualizations Publish to the Power BI service Share your visualizations with your audience

Prep your data

Before you start creating interactive visualizations and analytics reports, make sure your data is in good shape.

Import your data

Connect to a range of data sources: on-premises databases, Excel workbooks, and cloud services such as Facebook or Google Analytics. Or connect to generic sources through XML, CSV, text, and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Power BI will even scrape tabular data directly from a web page.

Connect to data sources in Power BI Desktop

Clean your data

Remove any unwanted data and ensure you have the values you’re expecting. Use the Power BI Query Editor to clean your data so it’s ready for modeling and visualizations.

Clean and transform your data with the Query Editor

Data sources and transformation

Cleaning irregular formatted data

Model your data

Use data modeling to connect multiple data sources, combine information from different columns, perform calculations across columns, or summarize a set of data.

Create relationships between different data sources

Create calculated columns

Optimize data models for better visuals

Now you’re ready to see your data come to life. Learn how to create visualizations that reveal the stories within your data, and bring those stories to life in a way that will engage your audience. Not sure which ones to choose?

Start Here

Visualization tutorials

Each tutorial can be completed in under 10 minutes.

Customize simple visualizations

Create combination charts

Use slicers to visually segment your data

Create interactive map visualizations

Use tables and matrixes

See scatter charts in action

Use waterfall and funnel charts

Use gauges and single number cards

Modify colors in charts and visuals

Style your reports with shapes, text boxes and images

Report layout and formatting

Specify which visuals interact on a dashboard

Duplicate a report page

Show categories with no data

Define how your visuals summarize data

Arrange how your report elements overlap

Visual hierarchies and drill-down behavior

Explore R visuals in Power BI (not for publication)

Create custom visuals

Sometimes you may want to visualize your data in a way that’s not yet represented in our library. So we’ve created an open source framework for other data storytelling enthusiasts around the world to create and share their own creative visualizations.

Download custom visuals

Visit the Office store to download more than 100 custom visuals developed and shared by the community.

Browse the collection

Get step-by-step instructions

Develop your own

Develop custom visualizations using our open source code published in GitHub.

Learn more

Set up your Power BI service account

To get started, visit the Self-service sign up for Power BI page. From there you can visit the Power BI website and sign in using a work or school email address. Now you’re logged in to the Power BI service.

Publish your visualizations to the Power BI service

After you’ve built your data visualizations in Power BI Desktop, publish to your Power BI service workspace with just a few clicks.

Here's how

Use Power BI Pro for collaboration

The free version of Power BI is intended for individual use and publishing to the web. If you want to collaborate on reports with colleagues, you’ll need Power BI Pro. Try it free for 60 days.

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Resources

Data visualization and storytelling

Watch renowned visualization expert Albert Cairo as he shares the methodology behind graphics and how they can support data storytelling in this 5-course series.

Explore the courses

Power BI documentation

Learn the ins and outs of reports, visualizations, administration, troubleshooting, and more.

Find documentation

Power BI community

Search for answers, learn from others, get updates, and discuss Power BI with experts and peers in this global online forum.

Visit the community

Visit the Data Storytelling forum

Vote on the product roadmap

Help improve Power BI by suggesting and voting on product features and improvements.

Share your ideas

Data Stories gallery

See what’s possible with examples of data storytelling from other community members. Get ideas, discuss reports with the authors, or contribute your own.

Visit the Data Stories gallery

Guided learning

Build your knowledge from the ground up through a self-paced, sequential series of courses and tutorials covering a full range of Power BI topics.

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Join the Microsoft Data Journalism program

The Microsoft Data Journalism program helps journalists and media organizations learn data storytelling and visualization. Through the program, you can get help with Power BI, with coaching and collaboration to build compelling, interactive visualizations.

Our team consists of former journalists, data experts, designers, and software developers who understand the deadline pressures and urgency in producing flawless content—as well as the power of data visualization to bring stories to life in a powerful way.

To learn more, email MSFTDataJournalism@Microsoft.com.