Master Data Analysis

Automatically export Minitab graphs to PowerPoint

What do you do up after finishing an analysis with a lot of graphs in Minitab? Paste them one by one in PowerPoint or word, right? If you’re doing this, you’re wasting your precious time, because you can export all your graphs and analysis with a single command within Minitab.

1. First make sure you’re in the Session Window: Go to Window -> Session or press Ctrl + M

Once you’re in the Session window, enable the commands: go to Editor -> Enable Commands
The command line will appear in the Session window:
Type the magic word XPPOINT in the command line and press Enter. All the output from Minitab will be exported to PowerPoint. Likewise you can export the Minitab output to MS Word by using the command: XWORD.

Notes:

- The previous steps will enable the command line in the current project, however, if you want to always have it enabled you can go to Tools -> Options -> Session Window -> Submitting Commands -> Enable.

By default the XPPOINT and XWORD commands will open a new file. If you want to append the graphs to an existent PowerPoint presentation or MS Word document you can use the APPEND subcommand: XPPOINT; APPEND.

Using the Command Line Editor

Another way of entering commands in Minitab is by using the Command Line Editor.

1. Display the command line editor: go to Edit -> Command Line Editor or just press Ctrl + L on your keyboard.

1. Type XPPOINT or XWORD in the Command Line Editor and press Submit Commands.

Two key points:

1. - The graphs and analysis will be exported in the order they were created
  - The graphs will be exported as big as possible to PowerPoint maintaining the same aspect ratio they had in Minitab.

Click here to download a Minitab file with several graphs and analysis for you to practice the export feature. This file is compatible with Minitab 15 or later.

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Orlando Mezquita

Love helping out people to get better using data analysis tools! My day job is statistician for a Pharmaceutical Company.

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View Comments

Joe says:

July 14, 2015 at 11:19 pm

great info! How do I get the exports to not include session data? I just want the graphs!
Orlando Mezquita says:

July 15, 2015 at 12:23 am

Hi Joe,

Great question!!

To export only the graphs:
* Go to the graphs folder (Ctrl + Alt + G)
* Select all the graphs (Select the first one, select the last one while holding the shift key)
* Right-click any of the graphs and press "Send to Microsoft PowerPoint"

Hope this helps!
- Dan says:
  
  July 16, 2015 at 6:13 pm
  
  If you are using Minitab 17 just right click on the graph and you have a choice to sent to Powerpoint or Microsoft Word in the menu.
  - Orlando Mezquita says:
    
    July 17, 2015 at 12:38 pm
    
    Thanks Dan!
    
    My steps were for exporting all graphs but if you want to export only one, then your steps are the way to go.
    
    Thanks for commenting!
MikeM says:

July 15, 2015 at 11:12 pm

excellent info. Thx for sharing.
Orlando Mezquita says:

July 16, 2015 at 1:31 am

I'm glad you liked it Mike.

I'll keep posting information like this, so feel free to subscribe if you're interested in getting notified when new posts become available.
Juan Antonio says:

July 20, 2015 at 8:45 am

great , I love do minitab macros , this will help me to improve the results. Thanks
Andre says:

June 20, 2017 at 2:12 pm

My boss really wants me to automate this using VBA. Any ideas how to do that? Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks