Labs · Power BI

Lab: Load a Sales CSV into Power BI Desktop and Build Your First Bar Chart

By Ravindra Bagale · Last updated: 8 October 2026

Suppose we are…

Suppose we have just joined Flipkart as a junior data analyst. On our first Monday, the regional manager sends a small CSV file (comma-separated values: a plain-text table where commas separate the columns) with two weeks of sales from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. Her question is simple: "Which city sold the most, and by how much?" She wants a chart, not a long table.

The numbers in this lab are sample data made up for practice, not real Flipkart figures.

Goal of this lab

By the end you will have:

• Loaded a CSV file into Power BI Desktop with Get data → Text/CSV.
• Checked the loaded rows in Table view.
• Built a clustered bar chart (horizontal bars) of total sales by city, sorted from biggest to smallest, with data labels.
• Saved your first .pbix file (the Power BI Desktop report file).

What you need (all free)

• A Windows 10/11 laptop or PC. Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows; on a Mac, use a Windows virtual machine or a college/institute lab PC.
• Power BI Desktop (free) from the Microsoft Store.
• The sample file: Download city_sales.csv (12 rows)
• 30 minutes.

The data: before and after

Here is the file exactly as you download it: 12 rows, 4 columns (Date, City, Product, Sales in rupees).

And here is the answer we want Power BI to calculate for us: one row per city, with all its sales added up.

Mumbai has 4 rows: 42,000 + 61,000 + 8,000 + 36,000 = 147,000. Power BI does this adding for us when we put City and Sales into one chart. We do not write any formula in this lab; the chart sums the Sales column automatically.

Steps

1. Create a folder Documents\PowerBI-Labs and save city_sales.csv into it. Do not open and re-save the file in Excel first.
2. Open the Microsoft Store, search Power BI Desktop, and click Get (or Install). When it finishes, open Power BI Desktop.
3. If a sign-in window appears, close it with the X. You do not need an account for this lab.

4. On the start screen, click Blank report.

   👁 What you should see: an empty white canvas in the middle, and on the right the Visualizations and Data panes.

5. On the Home ribbon, click the arrow under Get data and choose Text/CSV.

6. Go to Documents\PowerBI-Labs, select city_sales.csv and click Open.

   👁 What you should see: a preview window with 4 columns (Date, City, Product, Sales), 12 rows, and Delimiter: Comma at the top.

7. Click Load (not Transform Data; we do not need to clean anything today).

   👁 What you should see: in the Data pane on the right, a table named city_sales with the fields Date, City, Product and Sales. Sales has a Σ sign, which means Power BI will add it up.

8. Click Table view (the grid icon on the left edge) and check that there are 12 rows. Then click Report view (the top icon) to go back to the canvas.

9. In the Visualizations pane, click the Clustered bar chart icon (horizontal bars). An empty chart appears on the canvas.
10. From the Data pane, drag City into the Y-axis box of the chart.

11. Drag Sales into the X-axis box.

    👁 What you should see: three horizontal bars titled Sum of Sales by City: Mumbai about 147K, Pune about 131K, Nagpur about 87K.

12. Make the biggest city appear on top: hover over the chart, click More options (…) → Sort axis → Sum of Sales, and again … → Sort axis → Sort descending.

13. Show the numbers on the bars: with the chart selected, click Format visual (the paint-brush icon in the Visualizations pane) → Visual → switch Data labels to On.

14. Drag the corner of the chart to make it bigger.

    👁 What you should see: a chart like the one below.

    

15. Click File → Save as, go to Documents\PowerBI-Labs, name the file Lab-C-city-sales and click Save. Keep this file; Lab D starts from it.

Common mistakes

Self-check checklist

Try-at-home challenge

On the same page, build a second chart without looking at the steps:

1. A Clustered column chart of Sales by Product.
2. A Slicer (a clickable filter box on the report) with the City field.
3. Click Pune in the slicer. Which product sold the most in Pune, and how much?

Samjla ka? Get data, Load, drag two fields, and the question is answered. Aata pudhe jaauya: in Lab D we write our first CALCULATE measure on this same file.