MVP #81: Activating Excel's Data Analysis Tools

I regularly meet people who are surprised when I show them that Excel has some of the core data analysis tools they seek out in other analysis software -- Moving Average for forecasting, Correlation, Covariance, Regression, ANOVA, Descriptive Statistics, Fourier Analysis, Exponential Smoothing for forecasting and Sampling.

Today, I will show you how to enable these tools in Excel. And it is in all modern version of Excel.

Go to File (or the ribbon for Excel 2007), Options (or Excel Options for Excel 2007), Addins and Excel Add-ins.

So now you can do some of those core statistical analysis you often need to do to make sense of your data. And if you do some forecasting and planning, you should definitely check out the Moving Average and Exponential Smoothing (though it's just the Simple Exponential Smoothing the Toolpak has).

If you use Excel 2016, you've got a bonus -- A full triple exponential smoothing tool. Forecast Sheet under Data menu. Check it out or read my post about it.