Excel Tip of the Day
Access financial data with the Research task pane (Excel 2003)
The next time you're deep into building an Excel spreadsheet and need information on any of the thousands of international corporations, resist the impulse to launch your Internet browser to search for information, such as the stock ticker symbol, past year performance measured against the S&P 500, or number of employees in North America. You can find all this financial information and more without leaving Excel by using Microsoft's new Research Service and the Research task pane.
Select Research from the Tools menu to launch the Research task pane. In the Search For text box, enter the company name, for example, IBM. Click the arrow in the dropdown list, and scroll through the list of research sources. Near the bottom, click Gale Company Profiles under the All Business And Financial Sites category. In a flash, you'll see the vital stats for the company. If you need more info, click on View Complete Profile at the bottom of the company information. If you use Internet Explorer 5.01 or later, your browser will launch and the Research pane will stay conveniently parked next to it. From the Thomson Gale Web site, you can choose to pay for the jewels of information that comprise the complete profile. To get back to your spreadsheet, just close the browser window. Expect to see more Web services, such as Gale's, as Office 2003 becomes more widely used.
If you're on the hunt for hard performance numbers or the current stock price, MSN money is your up-to-the-minute resource. Keep the Research task pane open, type in the company's stock ticker abbreviation in the Search For text box and select MSN Money Stock Quotes from the dropdown list. To insert the current stock price into your spreadsheet's active cell, click Insert Price. Look for Charts under More On MSN Money and select 1 Year, 3 Year, or 5 Year to create dynamic chart comparisons. (Note: We used Excel 2003 for this example, but you can leverage the Research pane like this in any Office 2003 application.)
(Content provided by Element K Journals)
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