Beyond the Spreadsheet: A Beginner’s Guide to Power BI

You’ve gathered your data. You have survey results, project statistics and months of tracking progress. It’s all sitting in a spreadsheet, waiting to be understood, but no matter how far you scroll, the bigger picture feels just out of reach.

Whether you're presenting your work, tracking progress or analyzing trends, a dashboard can help turn raw data into clear, interactive visuals that tell a story. With Power BI, Microsoft’s business intelligence platform, building a dashboard is more accessible than you might think.

In this hands-on Open Lab, you’ll learn how to use Power BI to build your first interactive dashboard through a step-by-step tutorial. We’ll work with real-world datasets, guide you through the basics and demonstrate how to use Power Query to clean and combine your data for visualization. Whether you're tracking trends, analyzing survey results or developing new data skills, this session will help you move from spreadsheet to insight.

This Open Lab, presented by the Unit for Data Science and Analytics at ASU Library, is designed for students and professionals of all levels and disciplines — from business and engineering to social sciences and beyond. No prior Power BI experience is required. You’ll leave with a functional dashboard and a foundational understanding of Power BI’s core features.

Bring your laptop, your questions and your curiosity. If you’re ready to tell your data’s story, join us and start building dashboards that speak for themselves.