“Click ‘Transform Data,’” he said. “Now, right-click the ‘Sales Date’ column. Change the type to ‘Date.’ See that? You just saved yourself three hours.”
“Welcome to 2020,” Dan said in the first video. “Data isn’t scarce anymore. Meaning is. Power BI isn’t just a tool. It’s a translator.”
Clara opened Microsoft Teams. She shared her screen.
By Chapter 6, Clara had forgotten what sleep felt like. Dan introduced the —a palette of stacked bars, line charts, maps, and cards.
Clara felt a shiver. She watched as Dan unpivoted a monstrous cross-tab report with a single click. Columns labeled Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 melted into neat rows of “Attribute” and “Value.” It was witchcraft. Clean, reproducible, recorded-step witchcraft.
Clara downloaded the free desktop app. Her laptop fan whirred to life like a startled cat.
Clara spent an hour dragging lines between her tables. She felt like an architect. She created a separate “Calendar” table using a DAX formula Dan provided: Calendar = CALENDAR(MIN(Sales[Date]), MAX(Sales[Date])) . She didn’t fully understand DAX yet, but the date slicer that appeared later made her gasp.
Marcus set the coffee down. “How long did this take you?”