Monday, April 20, 2009

Free Investment Research Training!

Don't miss the virtual Morningstar Investment Research Center training session on Wednesday, April 29 at 2:00pm.

It can be accessed at any location with phone and Internet access. To register, simply e-mail librarytraining@morningstar.com and mention Missoula Public Library in your email.

We will also be offering 6 seats for this training in our Computer Classroom. Space is limited. Call 721-2665 to reserve your seat.

In the meantime, learn how to export data from Morningstar so that you can have historical financial statements and stock quotes where you need them, when you need them. Read on!

The Training Corner | by Lars Wasvick, Associate Product Manager
What Is the Exporting Thing?

Client feedback is something very important to us at Morningstar. In our most recent survey, many clients told us that Morningstar Investment Research Center should consider exporting capabilities. After months of development, you can now export stock price history and historical financial statements.

So where is it?

As excited as we are to have this capability, exporting is not one of those features that jumps out at you from our home page. However, I promise it is in there, so if you haven't found it yet, just read along.

All stock pages have the same format. Running down the left side of the page you will see a number of different tabs. If you click on Financial Statements you will see a new set of tabs and 10-years' worth of numbers. Scroll down to the bottom right corner and you will see a prompt, Export to Excel. Simply click and you've got a 10-year Income Statement. Just follow suit for Cash Flows and Balance Sheet to get your data.

Now for daily price history you will want to click on Dividends & Returns tab on the left side of the page. In about the middle of the next page there is a heading Price/Dividends/Splits and just beneath that is the price history. Slide over to the right and you will see five years listed. Click on a year to get the closing price for each trading day of that year. Right at the top you will find the Export to Excel tab. Click there and you will get the designated year in an Excel spreadsheet.

To save you cumbersome cutting and pasting, you can also get five years of price history together. You will find that option back at the Dividends & Returns page. At the far right of the price history section you will find the prompt. Click that and you will get each closing price for the past five years.

I will be demonstrating export functionality along with many other features during the Patron Training Session.

C) Copyright 2009. Morningstar, Inc.

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