Power BI Desktop (formerly Power BI Designer) is the tool that allows us to create Power BI visualizations. It is a stand-alone Windows Desktop application (a Mac version has been submitted to the Ideas section of the Power BI forums – see here).
To install the tool, go to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/ and download the latest application.
You have 2 options to install. The first is by clicking Download, which will open the Microsoft Store. Let’s do this install first. Click Install:
Power BI will download:
And install:
You can also access it from the Windows Start menu:
The Windows Store option is useful as it updates Power BI automatically. If you want more control over your installation and updates, you can install Power BI using its exe. Let’s look at how to do this.
Click on See Download or Language Options back on the download page:
From here, you can see the version you are downloading, date published etc:
And you can select the version you would like to install. This is useful if you are installing on other machines:
Let’s install the x64 version this way. Double click on the downloaded file:
Click Next:
Click Next:
Click Next:
Using this method, we can select the folder to install Power BI Desktop:
Confirm if you want a desktop icon or not and click Next:
Click Finish:
Opening the desktop, you will be able to connect to different data sources to start building reports.
The application checks for updates, and you will find yourself downloading updates regularly (which shows Microsoft’s commitment to keeping the product up to date and leading edge).
I will go into more detail on how to use the desktop in other posts.
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