Get samples for Power BI - Power BI (2023)

Article
01/09/2023
12 minutes to read

APPLIES TO: PowerBIDesktop PowerBIservice

Are you new to Power BI and you want to try it out, but you don't have any data? Or maybe you'd like to see reports that illustrate some of the capabilities of Power BI. We've got you covered.

Power BI offers different kinds of samples for different purposes, including built-in samples and apps in the Power BI service, .pbix files, Excel datasets, and SQL databases. Here's a collection of different samples:

The Power BI report (.pbix file). You can view it in the Data Stories Gallery, open and explore it in Power BI Desktop, or upload it to the Power BI service.
The Artificial Intelligence sample Power BI report. In the report, you explore the Power BI artificial intelligence features such as key influencers, root-cause analysis in a decomposition tree, and anomaly detection. Download a copy from the Learn page in the Power BI service navigation pane.
A sample template app. You download it from AppSource, also right in the Power BI service. Template apps include dashboards, reports, and datasets. You can modify them, then distribute them to your colleagues.
Eight original built-in samples in the Power BI service, with dashboards, reports, and datasets. You install them right in the Power BI service. The built-in samples are also available as Power BI reports (.pbix) and Excel workbooks (.xlsx).
Excel workbook versions of the built-in samples, containing the data model. You can explore the data model in the Power Pivot add-in for Excel or use the Excel workbook as a data source for a Power BI report.
A Financial data sample workbook, a simple flat table in an Excel file available for download. It contains anonymized data with fictitious products, with sales divided by segments and countries/regions. It makes a useful basic data source for a Power BI report.
An Excel workbook version of the AdventureWorks dimensional model, in a tutorial to walk you through creating a Power BI report with the data.
If you'd rather work with data in SQL databases, the SQL samples article features links to downloadable AdventureWorks and WorldWideImporters SQL databases in a GitHub repository. The article also has links to other Azure samples.

Our online documentation uses these same samples in tutorials and examples, so you can follow along.

Sales & Returns sample .pbix file

The Sales & Returns sample report

Power BI report designers Miguel Myers and Chris Hamill created the Sales & Returns .pbix file to demonstrate many new features in Power BI, including buttons, drillthrough, conditional formatting, what-if, and customized tooltips.

The scenario for this report is a company that sells Microsoft-themed skateboards. They want to see the state of their sales and returns, and analyze how they should modify their operations.

You can explore it these ways:

Download the .pbix file and explore it in depth. Look "behind the curtain" to see how Miguel made it. This link opens the GitHub repo for Power BI Desktop samples. Select Download to download the Sales & Returns sample .pbix file to your computer.
Read about the report in the Power BI blog post, .

Eight original samples

Eight original samples are available for you to use. Each sample represents a different industry. You can engage with each in different formats:

Install the built-in samples in the Power BI service.
Download the Power BI report files (.pbix).
Download the Excel workbook files (.xlsx), then upload them to the Power BI service.
Explore the Excel files in Excel itself.

The company obviEnce (www.obvience.com) and Microsoft teamed up to create samples for you to use with Power BI. The data is anonymized and represents different industries: finance, HR, sales, and more.

Each of these samples is available in several formats: as a built-in sample, as an Excel workbook, and as a Power BI .pbix file. If you don't know what these things are, or how to get your hands on them -- don't worry. This article explains it all. For each of these samples, we've created a tour. Tours are articles that tell the story behind the sample and walk you through different scenarios. One scenario might be answering questions for your manager, another might be looking for competitive insights, or creating reports and dashboards to share, or explaining a business shift.

Before we get started, here are the legal guidelines for using these samples. After that, we introduce the samples and show how to use them.

Usage guidelines for the sample Excel workbooks

©2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The documents and workbooks are provided "as-is." Information and views expressed in the workbooks, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. Some examples are for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association is intended or inferred. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

(Video) Download sample datasets and reports for Power BI and Excel

The workbooks do not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this workbook for your internal, reference purposes.

The workbooks and related data are provided by obviEnce. www.obvience.com

ObviEnce is an ISV and an Intellectual Property (IP) Incubator focused on Microsoft Business Intelligence. ObviEnce works closely with Microsoft to develop best practices and thought leadership for jump-starting and deploying Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions.

The workbooks and data are property of obviEnce, LLC, and have been shared solely for the purpose of demonstrating Power BI functionality with industry sample data.

Customer Profitability sample

Take a tour of the Customer Profitability sample

This industry sample analyzes a CFO's key metrics for the company's executives, products, and customers. You can investigate what factors impact the company's profitability.

Human Resources sample

Take a tour of the HR sample

This industry sample focuses on the hiring strategy for a company by analyzing new hires, active employees, and employees who have left. By exploring the data, you can find trends in voluntary separations and biases in the hiring strategy.

IT Spend Analysis sample

Take a tour of the IT Spend Analysis sample

In this industry sample, we analyze the planned vs. actual costs of the IT department of a company. This comparison helps us understand how well the company planned for the year and investigate areas with huge deviations from the plan. The company in this example goes through a yearly planning cycle, and then quarterly it produces a new Latest Estimate (LE) to help analyze changes in IT spend over the fiscal year.

Opportunity Analysis sample

Take a tour of the Opportunity Analysis sample

This industry sample explores a software company's sales channel. Sales managers monitor their direct and partner sales channels by tracking opportunities and revenue by region, deal size, and channel.

Procurement Analysis sample

Take a tour of the Procurement Analysis sample

This industry sample analyzes a CFO's key metrics for the company's executives, products, and customers. You can investigate what factors impact the company's profitability.

Retail Analysis sample

Take a tour of the Retail Analysis sample

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This industry sample analyzes retail sales data of items sold across multiple stores and districts. The metrics compare this year's performance to last year's in these areas: sales, units, gross margin, and variance, as well as new store analysis.

Sales and Marketing sample

Take a tour of the Sales and Marketing sample

This industry sample analyzes a manufacturing company, VanArsdel Ltd. It allows the Chief Marketing Officer to watch the industry and the market share for VanArsdel. By exploring the sample, you can find the company's market share, product volume, sales, and sentiment.

Supplier Quality sample

Take a tour of the Supplier Quality sample

This industry sample focuses on one of the typical supply chain challenges — supplier quality analysis. Two primary metrics are at play in this analysis: total number of defects and the total downtime that these defects caused. This sample has two main objectives: understand who the best and worst suppliers are, with respect to quality, and identify which plants do a better job finding and rejecting defects, to minimize downtime.

Install built-in samples

Let's start with the built-in samples. The built-in samples are available in the Power BI service; you don't have to leave Power BI to find them. These samples are each a bundle of one or more dashboards, datasets, and reports that someone creates and that can be used with the Power BI service. These built-in samples are still available, but are being deprecated. They aren't available for Power BI Desktop.

Open the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) and sign in.
Navigate to your My Workspace, or another workspace where you want to install the sample.
In the bottom-left corner, select Get data.
On the Get Data page that appears, select Samples.
Select one of the samples to open a description of that sample, and choose Connect.
Power BI imports the built-in sample and adds a new dashboard, report, and dataset to your current workspace. Use the samples to take Power BI for a test run.

Now that you have data, you're on your way. Try out some of our tutorials using the built-in samples or just open the Power BI service and explore.

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Download original sample Power BI files

Each of the built-in samples is also available as Power BI .pbix file. The .pbix files are designed to be used with Power BI Desktop.

Download the files individually using the links below. Selecting these links saves the file automatically to your Downloads folder.
- Customer Profitability Sample PBIX
- Human Resources Sample PBIX
- Procurement Analysis Sample PBIX
- Retail Analysis Sample PBIX
- Sales and Marketing Sample PBIX
- Supplier Quality Analysis Sample PBIX
In Power BI Desktop, select File > Open and navigate to the location where you saved the sample .pbix file.
Select the .pbix file to open it in Power BI Desktop.

Download sample Excel files

Each of the built-in samples is also available as an Excel workbook. The Excel workbooks are designed to be used as a data source in the Power BI service or Power BI Desktop. If you're an advanced Excel user, you can explore or edit the data models in the Power Pivot add-in to Excel.

Download one or all of the sample Excel files from this GitHub repository.
- Customer Profitability Sample
- Human Resources Sample
- IT Spend Analysis Sample
- Opportunity Tracking Sample
- Procurement Analysis Sample
- Retail Analysis Sample
- Sales and Marketing Sample
- Supplier Quality Analysis Sample
Save the downloaded file. Where you save the file makes a difference.
Local: If you save your file to a local drive on your computer, you can publish the files to Power BI from Excel. After you've published it, there's no remaining relationship between your local file and the file in the Power BI service.
OneDrive - Business: If you have OneDrive for work or school and you sign into it with the same account you sign into Power BI with, OneDrive for work or school is by far the best place to keep your work in your Excel file in sync with your dataset, reports, and dashboards in Power BI. Because both Power BI and OneDrive are in the cloud, Power BI connects to your file on OneDrive about every hour. If Power BI detects any changes to the files in OneDrive, it automatically updates your datasets, reports, and dashboards in the Power BI service.
SharePoint Team-Sites: Saving your Power BI files to SharePoint – Team Sites is much the same as saving to OneDrive for work or school. The biggest difference is how you connect to the file from Power BI. You can specify a URL or connect to the root folder.
You can use the files as data sources in Power BI Desktop, or Publish to Power BI from Excel to the Power BI service. When you publish, you choose one of these options:
- Upload your workbook to Power BI: Brings the whole Excel file into Power BI, or
- Export workbook data to Power BI: Creates a blank Power BI report with all your Excel data in the Fields list.

Explore Excel samples in Excel

(Optional) Want to understand how the data in these Excel workbooks gets converted to Power BI datasets and reports? Opening the Excel samples in Excel and exploring the worksheets provides some of the answers.

When you first open a sample workbook in Excel, you may see two warnings. The first warning says the workbook is in Protected View. Select Enable Editing. The second warning may say that the workbook has external data connections. Select Enable Content.
There's only one Excel sheet, the Info sheet. It provides information about obviEnce, the company that created the sample, and explains how to see the data in Power Pivot.
Where's the actual data? It's in the Power Pivot data model. On the PowerPivot tab, select Manage. In Power Pivot, you can see the data in all the underlying tables, plus all the DAX formulas.
Tip
Don't see the Power Pivot tab? Enable the Power Pivot add-in.

Upload the Excel files to the Power BI service

Open the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) and sign in.
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Navigate to your My Workspace or to another workspace, or create a workspace just for the sample.
In the bottom-left corner of the navigation pane, select Get data.
On the Get Data page that appears, select Files > Get.
Select the location where you downloaded and saved the sample.
Select the file. Depending on where you saved the file, select Connect or Open.
Choose whether to import the data or to bring the workbook into Power BI and see it exactly as it is in Excel online.
If you select Import, Power BI imports the sample workbook and adds it as a new blank report and dataset, in this case each named Procurement Analysis Sample.
Open the report, and explore creating visuals in Power BI.