Four Clicks to Import BLS Data to Microsoft Excel

NOTE: This is supported by Internet Explorer v7.0 or better and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 or better.

Importing data from the Bureau's website to Microsoft Excel does not have to be difficult.

There are ways to import BLS data that may surprise you by just how easy they are.

Many of the Bureau's pages contain "latest numbers boxes" that show some of the most important BLS numbers. Within those boxes are green dinosaur icons representing the quick link to historical data. Clicking on the dinosaur brings up a series, its chart, and recent data. Did you know that you can pull any dinosaur-anchored data series into Excel, in four mouse clicks, with no keyboard typing at all?

Here's how:

CLICK 1

Start on any page at BLS that contains a green dinosaur icon, for example: http://www.bls.gov.

Choose one of the green dinosaur icons in the"latest numbers" box and left-click that dinosaur.
The descriptive information, chart and data for that series will be retrieved.

CLICK 2

Locate your mouse cursor on the word "Series" in the returned information from the database that is displayed. (Actually, anywhere on the series description or the table is ok, but don't choose the chart.) RIGHT-click on the word "Series". It's important that this step be a right click on your mouse. Internet Explorer displays a drop down box. In that drop down box, you'll see an entry, near the bottom of the list, that reads "Export to Microsoft Excel".

CLICK 3

Click on the item "Export to Microsoft Excel". Internet Explorer will open Microsoft Excel, create a query, and pull the data right into an Excel workbook!

CLICK 4

Check the Taskbar, on the bottom of your screen, and you'll see that Excel is now open. Click on Microsoft Excel.  Surprise, the data is already there!

More good news! Save this file. Next month, when BLS adds a new data observation, you can update your information. Simply RIGHT-click in the middle of the data points and choose "Refresh" from the drop down list. This action will rerun the query, and add the latest data observation to the information within your workbook. You can see this by deleting a block of data, right clicking, and choosing "Refresh". The data will come back.

 

 

Last Modified Date: May 8, 2009