Have you ever wanted to calculate a simple statistic in Excel, but couldn’t find the correct tab to do so? If so, it is possible that you did not have the “Data Analysis” tab activated. For some reason, Excel defaults the Data Analysis tab as inactive, although it is completely free and pre-installed. Weird, right?

To determine whether your Data Analysis tab is activated, open a blank Excel workbook. Click on the data tab at the top. Do you see a sub-tab labeled “Analysis” or “Data Analysis”? If not, then perform the following steps:

As seen below, click on the “Tools” menu:

Then click “Excel Add-ins…”:

Click the checkbox beside “Analysis Toolpak”:

And now click “OK”:

Now, let’s see if it worked!  Click on the “Data” tab at the top:

Do you see a “Data Analysis” button?  If so, great!  You can now perform statistics in Excel!  If not, look back through the prior steps and see where you went wrong.

A very special thanks goes to my former MBA student, Misty Bussie.  She created the pictures for this guide and provided an overview of the instructions.  Thank you so much Misty!

If you would like to see a different guide on MattCHoward.com, please email me at MHoward@SouthAlabama.edu.  Thanks for reading!

Lastly, the steps are different if you are using Windows.  Click here for information on activating Data Analysis in Excel for Windows.