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Nima Mohandesan's avatar
Nima Mohandesan
Copper Contributor
Jan 24, 2018

PowerPivot

Hi, 

 

So, I already know that PowerPivot is not included in Office365 subscription (which is the one I have), however, I have Power BI Desktop, and SSAS installed on my machine. Is there any good way to free me from Excel while trying to figure out Data Modeling and DAX? Is Excel always a starting point for this learning or one can learn data modeling and DAXing and other stuff independent of Excel? I use to have access to Excel 2016 and was practicing with Power Pivot while following up the book that I was learning from, now that I don't have access to that Excel anymore, my learning is stalled. Please advise. 

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  • Tanya Denton's avatar
    Tanya Denton
    Steel Contributor
    Jan 25, 2018
    Basically both are similar under the hood - both use M and DAX language. M is used in Power Query (i.e Get & Transform in Excel 2016) and in the query tool for Power BI Desktop. DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is the language used in Power Pivot and Power BI Desktop. M is to query your data sources, clean and load data. DAX is to analyze the data (Measures etc..) So personally, if you learn in one you will know it in the other. There is a wealth of information out there, and as you know, here you will find a wealth of knowledge.

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