Excel Add-ins
Add-ins are special files that provide additional functionality. After downloading an add-in file, the Add-ins Manager must be used to install it. Add-ins files have extension .xla or .xlam (for Excel 2007 and newer).
Currently Available:
Econ Chart Enhancer
Description and Installation
The Econ Chart Enhancer add-in has options for various tweaks to an existing chart, including adding shaded bars (for recessions), using a natural log scale, and fitting an exponential growth curve. While a knowledgeable Excel user could do these things on her own, this add-in saves a lot of tedious work.
Here is a short video on how to do this:
Scenario Comparative Statics
Description and Use
The Scenario Comparative Statics add-in creates scenarios for user-specified values of an exogenous variable and the corresponding solutions, displaying the results in a new sheet. It works with sheets that have analytical, reduced-form solutions entered as formulas for endogenous variables or using Excel's Solver to find the solution for each given value of the exogenous variable.
If you do not know how to install an add-in, view the video above. Here is a short video on how to use the Scenario Comparative Statics add-in:
FRED Excel Add-in
This add-in is freely available and produced by the St. Louis Fed as a convenient interface for accessing Fed data directly from Excel. There are over 60,000 US and international time series from various sources (e.g., BEA, BLS, Census, and OECD). Download the add-in from here:
research.stlouisfed.org/fred-addin
Housing.xls is an Excel workbook that shows how to use the FRED add-in. The screencast (also included in the Excel workbook) is here:
vimeo.com/econexcel/newhomesales