Power BI practice exercises: a free plan from first chart to DAX

Most people learn Power BI by watching videos, then freeze when they open a blank report. The fix is boring and works: short exercises with a clear goal and an answer you can check. This plan uses that idea, in the order the skills build on each other.

The data

Use Microsoft’s Financial Sample: 700 sales rows across 5 countries, 6 products and 5 segments, from September 2013 to December 2014. It’s small enough to check by hand and real enough to raise real questions. You can download it as a CSV or get the original workbook from Microsoft.

Stage 1: Getting around

Goal: load data, know the three views (Report, Table, Model), make one visual.

• Load the CSV and look at it in Table view. How many rows? Which columns are numbers?
• Make a card that shows total Sales.
• Make a bar chart of Profit by Country. Which country is first?

Ready when: you can build a chart without looking anything up.

Stage 2: Visuals that answer questions

Goal: pick the right visual for the question.

• Column chart of Sales by month. Does it sort by date or by size? Fix it.
• A matrix: Country on rows, Year on columns, Sales in values. Read one cell and both totals.
• Add a Country slicer and check that every visual changes.

Ready when: you can explain why you chose a matrix over a table, or a line over a column chart.

Stage 3: The data model

Goal: understand facts, dimensions and relationships.

• Add a Countries table with a Region column and connect it to the sales table.
• Make a chart of Sales by Region. Where did the filter come from?
• Find the country that’s in Countries but has no sales. Why doesn’t it show in a table?

Ready when: you can sketch the model and say which way filters flow.

Stage 4: Power Query

Goal: clean data before it reaches the model.

• Change column types and remove a column you don’t need.
• Split a text column and trim the spaces.
• Unpivot a table with one column per month.

Ready when: your applied steps read like a recipe someone else could follow.

Stage 5: DAX basics

Goal: write measures instead of dragging columns.

• Total Sales = SUM(financials[Sales]), then Profit Margin = DIVIDE([Total Profit], [Total Sales]).
• An IF measure that labels countries above or below a target.
• A calculated column, then explain why it’s a column and not a measure.

Ready when: you can say what a measure returns on a total row, and why.

After the basics

Then come the topics that separate juniors from seniors: CALCULATE and filter context, iterators like SUMX, time intelligence, ranking, row-level security and performance. Each one is worth a week of exercises, not an afternoon of videos.

Three rules that make practice work

1. Have an answer to check. “Make a chart” isn’t an exercise. “Which country had the highest profit in 2014?” is.
2. Type the formulas. Copy-pasting DAX teaches you nothing; the mistakes are the lesson.
3. Mix it up. After a few topics, do a round that combines them without hints. That’s what real work feels like.

Practice here, free

Every exercise above is an interactive lesson on this site, in a practice copy of Power BI Desktop that checks your answer instantly. The first lessons open straight away, and the first four stages are free with a free account. Start with the first lesson.

Sources

• Financial Sample workbook, Microsoft Learn
• Get started with Power BI Desktop, Microsoft Learn