How to Activate and Use the Statistics Package in Microsoft Excel
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Introduction: The standard installation of Microsoft Excel has a statistics data analysis package included with it. However, it is an "add in" which means it needs to be activated the first time its used. Thereafter, it will always be available as an option under the "Tools" menu. To activate the data analysis package and start doing statistical analysis follow the steps below. A series of figures are provided below each step which show how each screen should look. The figures are taken from Microsoft Excel 97, however early versions of Excel look about the same and the statistics packages work the same.
STEP 1: Click on "Tools" on the Excel top menu. A pull down menu will appear. If the data analysis package has already been activated, one of the last items on the list will be "Data Analysis..." If this is the case, go to STEP 3. If "Data Analysis..." does not appear on the pull down menu, click on "Add ins..." instead. This will let you add data analysis to the menu.
STEP 2: Clicking on "Add ins..." will bring up the add in menu shown below. The first item should be "Analysis ToolPak." If the box next to it is empty, click on the box and a check mark will appear. Now, click on "OK" and a data analysis option will be added to the bottom of the tools pull down menu.
STEP 3: To start a statistical analysis, first type the data you want to analyze in columns on the spreadsheet. Next, click on "Tools" then "Data Analysis...."
STEP 4: Selecting "Data Analysis..." from the tools pull down menu will display the first 10 statistical operations available (see below).
STEP 5: Clicking on the down arrow on the scroll bar will reveal the last 9 statistical operations available.
Each statistical operation has its own input/output screen. However, they all look very similar. To start an operation, click on the operation you want to use (this will highlight it in blue) then click on "OK." To learn how the statistical operation works and to learn how to fill in the input and output parameters, click on the "Help" button and follow the instructions for that operation. (The example shown below is for doing a histogram.)
