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#3 in Power BIUdemyPower BIPaid courseAll LevelsCertificate

Complete Introduction to Microsoft Power BI (Udemy.com)

Import, transform and visualize data in Power BI, then publish dashboards your team can actually use at work

Created by: Ian Littlejohn

Last updated September 2026

Our take

Based on the ratings of 51,162 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in September 2026. No course pays to be reviewed.

This is a short, practical introduction to Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service. It runs about 6 hours across 84 lectures and starts at installation, so no Power BI experience is assumed. The syllabus shows most of the time going to building tables, graphs and interactive dashboards, with shorter blocks on DAX, relationships and the Query Editor. It was last updated in September 2026 and has around 169,000 students. It suits Excel users who want to move their reporting into something more interactive.

Reviewers like Ian Littlejohn's teaching for being easy to follow, with activities after lessons that help the material stick. Beginners and career switchers call it a solid starting point, and one person preparing for PL-300 found it useful practice. The complaints are consistent. People with good Excel skills say parts feel repetitive. Others say it moves too fast, or that it lacks harder examples. The sharpest low-star reviews say the instructor's version of Power BI Desktop no longer matches the Microsoft Store version, so some steps do not line up.

The rating is 4.6 from 51,162 reviews, and most of them are four or five stars. That is a strong score for a six-hour course, though reviewers treat it as a starting point rather than the last word on Power BI. Anyone who finishes and wants more DAX and data modeling could look at Power BI Master Class next. Desktop needs Windows, and the free Service sign-up needs a work or school email. Recommended for beginners, less so for experienced Excel power users.

Best forExcel users who want a short, practical first pass at Power BI, including as warm-up for PL-300.
Skip it ifYou are on a Mac, or already know Power BI and want harder DAX and data modeling.

Pros

  • Starts at installation, so no Power BI experience is needed
  • Activities after lessons help apply what was just taught
  • Covers Power Query, DAX, dashboards and publishing in about 6 hours
  • Refreshed in September 2026 and rated 4.6 from over 51,000 reviews

Cons

  • Feels repetitive to people who already have strong Excel skills
  • Some reviewers say the pace is fast and the examples are not hard enough
  • Instructor's Desktop version can differ from the current Microsoft Store build
The lessons are very easy to follow and I love that there are activities after every lessons. Makes it easier to apply what I just learned.
Jade Harvee Salvador, a student

Beginners with basic Excel comfort. Experienced Power BI users will find it too light.

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What you will learn

  • Turn raw, messy data into a working report without editing a single cell by hand
  • Use Power Query to clean, reshape and combine data from Excel, the web and SQL
  • Build data models that link your tables so the numbers add up across the whole report
  • Write DAX measures for the calculations Power BI cannot do for you, such as running totals and year-on-year change
  • Design interactive dashboards with slicers and filters that let people answer their own questions
  • Publish to the Power BI Service and share securely with your team on laptop, tablet or phone
  • Work through real case studies using Sales, Finance and HR data rather than toy examples

Course content

13 sections · 84 lectures · 6.1 hours of video 11 articles

  1. 1Introduction 2 free previews4 lectures · 4 min
  2. 2The Power BI Desktop 1 free preview3 lectures · 10 min
  3. 3Creating Tables in Power BI Desktop 1 free preview14 lectures · 1.2 hours
  4. 4Visual Calculations 1 free preview4 lectures · 17 min
  5. 5Filters and Slicers10 lectures · 37 min
  6. 6Graphs and Visualizations 1 free preview14 lectures · 1 hour
  7. 7Interactive Dashboards 2 free previews12 lectures · 58 min
  8. 8Analyze Data with Excel3 lectures · 8 min
  9. 9DAX Formulas 1 free preview5 lectures · 35 min
  10. 10DAX Measures6 lectures · 24 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Excel users who have hit the ceiling - the workbook is too big, too slow or too manual, and rebuilding it every month has stopped being viable.
  • Business analysts who already produce the numbers and now need them to land: interactive, current, and readable by someone who was not in the room.
  • Managers who present data and are tired of waiting on somebody else to rebuild the chart before the meeting.
  • Complete beginners in Power BI. You need basic comfort with Excel and nothing else - the course starts at installation.
  • If you already know your way around Power BI and want to go deeper into data models and calculations, take Power BI Master Class - Data Models and DAX Formulas instead. This course is the foundation; that one is the next step.

What you need before you start

  • A PC or Windows laptop. Power BI Desktop does not run natively on Mac - if you are on a Mac you can still follow the Power BI Service sections, which run in any browser.
  • Power BI Desktop, downloaded free from Microsoft. No licence or subscription is needed to complete the course.
  • A work or school email address. Microsoft will not let you sign up for the free Power BI Service with a personal address such as Gmail or Outlook
  • Basic comfort with data in Excel is helpful. We start at installation, so no Power BI experience is assumed.

How it compares

Against the other 68 rated Udemy courses in Power BI on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 55% of them
  • Reviews51,162#2 of 69 by number of reviews
  • Length6.1 hoursshorter than 67% of them
  • Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 80% of them

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Course Description

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Every lesson in this course is written, created and recorded by me. AI is used only to help produce supporting images and written materials around the lessons.

Stop fighting spreadsheets and start building visual stories.

Whether you’re a business analyst, a manager, or an Excel power user looking for a better way, this course is designed to simplify your life. You’ll learn how to take messy raw data, clean it up in seconds, and build interactive dashboards that actually drive better business decisions.

Your New Skillset

  • The Power BI Workflow: Master the full journey from raw data to a finished report.

  • Automated Data Cleanup: Use Power Query to scrub and shape data so you never have to manually edit a cell again.

  • Smarter Analytics: Get comfortable with DAX to create custom metrics and deep-dive formulas.

  • Interactive Design: Build stunning tables and charts that let users click, filter, and explore.

  • Cloud Collaboration: Learn to publish your work to the Power BI Service and share it securely with your team.

The Curriculum

The learning path is broken into bite-sized, logical modules:

  • The Foundations: Setup, installation, and a tour of the Power BI interface.

  • Data Transformation: Connect to Excel, Web, or SQL and fix data issues instantly.

  • Data Modeling: Link your tables so your data "talks" to each other correctly.

  • Visualizations: Drag-and-drop your way to professional reports using slicers and advanced formatting.

  • DAX Mastery: Move beyond basic sums with calculated columns and measures.

  • Sharing: Transition from your desktop to the cloud for seamless organizational sharing.

Why Learn With Us?

  • Professional yet Accessible: The teaching is clear and practical—perfect for corporate training, but casual enough for a weekend project.

  • Hands-On Learning: You aren't just watching; you’re building. We use real-world case studies to ensure the skills stick.

  • Real Efficiency: We focus on the features that matter in a real job, helping you gain insights in a fraction of the time it takes in Excel.


A NOTE ON COPILOT AND AI

You may be wondering where Copilot fits in. Copilot in Power BI runs on a Microsoft Fabric capacity, which is something your organisation buys and switches on - not something you can enable yourself. Most people learning Power BI do not have it, and will not have it for a while.

So this course teaches you to do the work yourself: to build the model, write the measure and design the report. That is the skill that stays useful whether or not Copilot arrives, because you still have to know whether the answer it gives you is right.

If your organisation does turn Copilot on, everything in this course is what you will need to check its work.

Meet Your Instructor

I have been training business people to work with data since 2008, and publishing on Udemy since 2013. I now have 16 live courses with more than 400,000 students and more than 139,000 reviews, at an average rating of 4.6.

I teach Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Excel, Copilot in Excel, Looker Studio and Amazon QuickSight. What makes my courses different is that I teach the analysis, not just the tool - every lesson starts with a business question someone actually asks, and shows you how to answer it with software you already have.

What Students Are Saying:

  • "Highly recommended for anyone looking to develop real data analytics skills."

  • "The step-by-step comparison to Excel helped everything click for me."

  • "The perfect pace—it gave me a solid foundation I could use immediately."


Ready to start your journey? Let’s dive in.

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Instructor Details

Ian Littlejohn

I specialise in training business users to learn powerful methods and techniques to transform data into useful information and intelligence as well as learning strong data analysis methodology.


I completed my university degree in economics and emerged keen and eager to change the world. I spent the first half of my career working for multinational companies, on projects of various sizes, in different sectors, all revolving around analysing data of some sort and working with different software products, including Microsoft Excel.


I found that so many Excel users had a very basic understanding of how Excel works, and instead of using Excel to do the work for them, were doing all the work themselves, using old spreadsheet technology like macros instead of embracing technology like Pivot Tables. Pivot Tables were actually introduced into Excel in 1994 but many Excel users have avoided using them because they seem complicated and difficult to use.


In 2008 I decided to start my own training company and this was borne out of the passion I had to teach Excel users how to work smarter, not harder. As technology evolved, and new systems developed, I continuously expanded my training to include Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Looker Studio, and most recently Copilot in Excel and Microsoft 365 Copilot.


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Reviews

4.6

51,162 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Megha Das on 8/6/2026

a lot of the course is repeating functionality that is in excel so if you have a good skill level of excel it can feel very repetitive. the AI part was very temperamental and often did not complete some of the links to more information no longer exist

By Vikram on 7/6/2026

I have 13 years of experience in storage and looking to switch to Power BI . Its a great course for me to understand the basics and do some practical activity which help me in preparing for PL-300 Certification

By Victoria Holdsworth on 6/22/2026

a lot of the course is repeating functionality that is in excel so if you have a good skill level of excel it can feel very repetitive. the AI part was very temperamental and often did not complete some of the links to more information no longer exist

By Andrea Arias on 6/19/2026

Yes, lessons for beginners are really easy to understand, having the tables to practice along in the course is really helpful, the course is covering all the important tools that can be used on a daily basis.

By Justin Smith on 6/12/2026

Excellent course. The pacing and content were spot on for an introduction course. Other courses tend to be too quick or are aimed at the incorrect audience but this one was exactly what is needed for an into.

By Leszek Syski on 6/5/2026

So far, it seems at the right level for me. Got through the set-up, which is always the most worrisome part of any course. However, I am prevented from using Role Play by my organization.

By Maggie Mockbee on 5/8/2026

This training provides many opportunities to learn the various ways to utilize the broad capabilities of Power BI. I'm excited to begin implementing what I'm learning and change how my teams analyze data.

By Amani Ntinkwa on 5/4/2026

Well, it has been so great, so far I have learnt a lot about Power BI and its applications, I have to say "I am impressed with the cool things that you can do with it" the graphs and tables, that would make data analysis quite easier because the data visualization is also clear, I have also learnt how to pick the right type of graph with regards to the data and variables that I have

By Timothy Bennett on 4/24/2026

I tried a different course on Power BI, but it was only AI generated narration, which was terrible. I like that this is a human person instructing me, giving me clear and knowledgeable guidance on the system.

By Anonymized User on 4/19/2026

I really enjoy this course so far, the teacher is getting the right time with no rush to explain each tool inside Power BI, for a new user introducing to this app it is really appreciate it.

By D V Ravi Kumar on 11/14/2020

Attention to detail was given

By Kat French on 11/7/2020

Class is terrific. Easy to understand. Pace is good. Lessons are concise and well organized.

Showing 12 of 322 reviews

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Quality Score

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Overall Score : 92 / 100