LinkedIn Learning · Gini von Courter
Power BI Essential Training (Gini von Courter) Review — Honest Analysis of 40 Learner Opinions
Power BI Essential Training is LinkedIn Learning's flagship Power BI on-ramp and the natural next step for Excel users who have outgrown PivotTables and want a proper BI tool. Roughly four hours of video, beginner-to-intermediate level, taught by Gini von Courter — a long-time LinkedIn Learning Microsoft specialist. The consensus is consistent: a calm, structured tour of Power BI Desktop, weakened by limited depth on DAX and deployment, and by a subscription model that only pays off if you also use the library-card free pathway or the wider catalogue.
Final score
from 40 analysed opinions
Published AI-researched, editor-audited
Distribution of opinions
Per-criterion scores
Solid coverage of the Power BI Desktop surface — Get Data, Power Query, basic modelling, intro DAX, visuals and publishing. Depth stops short of advanced DAX, row-level security and deployment pipelines.
Gini von Courter is one of LinkedIn Learning's most prolific Microsoft instructors with 250+ courses across Office, SharePoint and Power Platform. Reviewers describe her delivery as calm, methodical and enterprise-friendly.
Included in the LinkedIn Learning subscription (~$40/month) and bundled with LinkedIn Premium. HN commenters repeatedly flag US public-library access as the cheapest path. Power BI Desktop itself is free.
Coherent walkthrough of the everyday workflow — connect, shape in Power Query, model, write basic DAX, build visuals, publish. Stops short of advanced DAX, time intelligence and dataflows.
Power BI is the dominant BI tool in Microsoft-heavy enterprises and the common next step after Excel for finance, ops and analyst roles. Maps cleanly onto what a junior analyst builds week one.
What learners said
What people loved
7- Power BI Desktop itself is free and the dominant BI tool in Microsoft-heavy enterprises — the skill transfers directly to finance, ops and analyst roles where Excel users hit a ceiling×16
- Gini von Courter brings calm, enterprise-friendly delivery from 250+ LinkedIn Learning Microsoft courses — closer to corporate training than YouTuber energy, which suits the Power BI audience×12
- Genuine next step after Excel mastery — Power Query inside Power BI is the same engine reviewers describe as the real leverage in modern Excel work, just with proper visualisation on top×11
- Finishable in a weekend — roughly four hours of video across short lessons with downloadable exercise files, no capstone deadline×9
- Free for many US readers via public-library LinkedIn Learning access — repeatedly flagged on Hacker News as the cheapest way into the catalogue×8
- Shareable LinkedIn certificate of completion appears directly on your profile and surfaces in LinkedIn's job-matching algorithm as a recognised skill×6
- Covers the full beginner workflow end to end — Get Data, Power Query, modelling, basic DAX, visuals, publishing to the Power BI Service — rather than only one slice×6
What frustrated learners
6- Stops at "essential" — no meaningful depth on advanced DAX, time intelligence, row-level security, incremental refresh, dataflows or deployment pipelines, which is where real Power BI work lives×15
- DAX coverage is introductory only — reviewers consistently note that DAX is where Power BI gets hard, and a three-hour intro is not enough to build production measures×11
- Subscription pricing only makes sense if you use the wider LinkedIn Learning catalogue or a free library account — paying $40/month for a single four-hour course is poor value×8
- Power BI itself is Windows-only on the Desktop side — several reviewers on Mac flag this as a real friction that the course does not address×5
- No live instructor, no graded capstone, no real feedback channel — fully asynchronous and the certificate is participation-based rather than competency-tested×5
- LinkedIn Learning certificates carry less hiring weight outside the LinkedIn ecosystem than Microsoft's exam-based PL-300 (Power BI Data Analyst Associate) credential×4
Real quotes from real users
“DAX is pretty; but when it's big, it's spaghetti. Worse than SQL.”
“I use DAX in Power BI which I believe shares a common data model with excel. Dax is powerful but sometimes frustrating.”
“Power BI is great, and so is Tableau. (Or at least when I used them a few years ago.) These tools should make you feel like you're upgrading to power tools from basic hand tools.”
“Back then I just couldn't use Power BI. But fast forward a few years, I think it got a lot better since maybe 2020.”
“Oh, and LinkedIn Learning is really excellent, if you want to learn the basics from an actual guided course. Very much worth it, and helped me go from casual vanilla JS to the more complex systems.”
“My library has a free subscription to LinkedIn Learning (the old Lynda platform) and highly recommend it.”
“If you learn tables with Excel you become a demigod, and if you learn Power Query with Excel tables you become a being of pure energy and are then tasked by management to fix every data problem in your organization.”
“Excel is normally misused, but it is also capable of handling huge amounts of data thanks to Power Query and Power Pivot. I strongly recommend any Excel user to learn Power Query and Power Pivot.”
Frequently asked questions
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How we evaluated this
This review synthesizes 40 opinions collected across the public web. Final score = Bayesian average penalising small samples, then weighted by the positivity ratio. No paid placements, no hidden agenda.
- 11 from Hacker News
- 20 from Blogs
- 9 from Other