Get Data: Connect to a CSV File
Click Get Data, point it at your file, preview it, and press Load — your first table is in.
What you will learn
- Use the Get Data button
- Connect to a CSV step by step
- Preview a table and click Load
The first button you will ever press
Every project begins by connecting to data. In Power BI Desktop, look at the Home ribbon at the top and click the big Get Data button. A menu of sources opens — and you already know which one to pick from the last lesson.
Connecting to a CSV — step by step
Imagine you have a file called sales.csv on your desktop. Here is exactly what you click:
- Click Home → Get Data → Text/CSV.
- Find and select
sales.csv, then click Open. - A preview window opens showing the first rows so you can check it looks right.
- Click Load to bring it straight in, or Transform Data to clean it first (next lesson).
Say your sales.csv looks like this:
Date,Product,Region,Amount
2026-01-03,Keyboard,North,1200
2026-01-05,Mouse,South,450
2026-01-09,Monitor,North,8900
2026-01-12,Keyboard,East,1200Note: Output: The preview window shows a neat table with columns Date, Product, Region and Amount. Power BI also guesses each column type — Date as a date, Amount as a whole number. After you click Load, the table appears on the right in the Data pane, ready to use.
Where your data lands
After loading, look at the Data pane on the far right. Your table (sales) is listed there, and clicking the small arrow shows its columns (Date, Product, Region, Amount). These are the building blocks for every chart you will make.
Tip: Not sure whether to click Load or Transform Data? If the preview already looks clean, click Load. If anything looks wrong (odd types, junk rows), click Transform Data to fix it in Power Query first.
Watch out: For Excel files, put your data in a clean rectangle with headers in the first row and no blank rows above it. Merged cells and stray notes confuse the import.
Q. Which button do you click first to bring data into Power BI?
✍️ Practice
- Make a small CSV with columns Date, Product and Amount, then connect to it with Get Data → Text/CSV.
- In the preview window, check whether Power BI guessed the Amount column as a number.
🏠 Homework
- Connect to any Excel or CSV file you have and load it. Write down the table name and its column names as shown in the Data pane.