Mathews Malnar and Bailey, Inc. Quality engineering, applied statistical consulting, and training services for R&D, product, process, and manufacturing engineering organizations.

MINITAB Automation
Writing any report of a statistical analysis can be a tedious process but repeating the same steps every day, week, month, or year is especially painful. Thankfully much of the work required to create a periodic report can be automated. Automatic report generation has four phases: 1) importing data from the data base into the analysis software, 2) performing the analysis, 3) importing the results of the analysis into the report environment, and 4) finalizing and publishing the report. In many cases the first three phases can be automated. The fourth phase must always be performed by the author/owner of the report.

Documentation and examples are provided here describing how to automate statistical analysis and report creation by importing data from Excel into MINITAB, running the statistical analysis in MINITAB, and then importing MINITAB's results into Microsoft Word. Importing data from Excel into MINITAB is implemented using ODBC. Importing MINITAB's results into Word is implemented using VBA. All three steps of the process are administered using VBA code in Word.

• This PDF document presents an example showing how to configure ODBC to import data from an Excel file into MINITAB.
• This macro-enabled Word template file contains a simple example of how to call MINITAB from VBA in Word and import MINITAB's results into the Word document. The template is configured to run the VBA code automatically every time you create a new Word document from the template. The template MUST be stored as a Trusted Template on your computer (use File> Save As> Trusted Template).
• This macro-enabled Word document contains VBA code that makes calls to MINITAB and reports all of the command output types and their values. Edit the MINITAB code to investigate the outputs from your own MINITAB analyses. The VBA code was taken from MINITAB's Help> Automation documents.
  
• This zip file contains a complete example of an automation project. The file contains an Excel data file, a MINITAB macro, and a macro-enabled Word template file. File locations are hard-coded in the VBA code so you must put the Excel file and MINITAB macro in C:\ and the Word template must be saved to your Trusted Templates folder. When you create a new Word document using the template the VBA code automatically imports data from the Excel file into MINITAB using ODBC, calls the MINITAB macro that performs the analysis, and then imports MINTAB's results into the Word file. The MINITAB project file and the Word document are automatically saved.
  

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